Case Study: Spokeo achieves transcription of over 250 million handwritten census records to power its People Search with CloudFactory

Spokeo transcribed 200 Million Handwritten Census Records for its People Search Engine

Spokeo, a people‑search platform founded in 2006, needed to incorporate historical U.S. census data (1790–1940) into its Universal People Search but found OCR unable to handle diverse handwriting across centuries. To solve this, Spokeo partnered with CloudFactory to use its on‑demand workforce and scalable tech platform for large‑scale, crowdsourced transcription of handwritten census records.

CloudFactory built a bidirectional API, rapidly scaled its Nepal workforce (growing from ~589 to over 3,300 workers), and delivered transcriptions at rates from ~700,000 records/week up to 10–11 million/week. Over a 15‑month engagement CloudFactory transcribed 250,680,609 census records, logged 706,828 work hours, and improved accuracy from about 93% to ~95%, enabling Spokeo to expand its historical data coverage and strengthen its people‑search offering.

Spokeo

Harrison Tang

CEO