Open Beta One (OB1)

We’ve been working away for the last few months, getting feedback from our beta users (thank you so much!) and refining the Wink experience. As we got closer to a public beta we gave accounts to the rest of the people who’d requested them so they could try it out. We’ve also given people the ability to invite up to 5 friends.

This is early, and there are still lots of bugs, but we hope you like it. Let us know what you think. We will be posting a list of known bugs as soon as the dust settles.

Some people might say “What exactly does Wink search?” Our thinking is that people who are frequent users of del.icio.us, digg and slashdot, who get their information from many sources, and who count on knowing what people are finding interesting right now - those people would like one place to search all those sources. Google and Yahoo are great for the whole Web, and we’ve integrated Google search into our service, but the Wink results - those are a measure of what people are thinking right now, based on their bookmarks and tagging.

We hope you enjoy Wink, and look forward to hearing from you.

Cheers,
Michael

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22 December 2005 | beta, Wink | Comments

8 Responses to “Open Beta One (OB1)”

  1. 1 Software Only 22 December 2005 @ 5:15 am

    Search Tags People = Wink

    Michael Tanne, the CEO of Wink, briefed me a couple of days ago on the forthcoming public beta that became available tonight around midnight Pacific Time. Wink is a search engine that allows users to bookmark and tag results, thereby altering the orde…

  2. 2 Make You Go Hmm: » Ho hum, Wink? 22 December 2005 @ 2:39 pm

    […] I tried other searches and they performed very well too. Wink has a clean, polished user interface and design (unlike the totally uninspiring default wordpress design for the Wink official blog). Users can create their own collections of mashed up tags to share with others. Stowe Boyd points out sees one Wink feature he likes: The “answers” feature — where people can add comments to the result of a search — is a new twist on the idea of “search as shared space” and if it catches on can create real value. […]

  3. 3 SKI’ Thruput Blog II 24 December 2005 @ 7:58 pm

    great start

    this is a very good start… reminds me of the early beta days of google.

  4. 4 J.D. Amer 27 December 2005 @ 2:11 pm

    Best of luck, this is a terrific idea. Any word on when sources other than del.icio.us will be sync-able?

  5. 5 bdeseattle 27 December 2005 @ 7:52 pm

    interesting web2.0 social search concept. when are you going to enable sync to del.icio.us? keep up the good work! –bdeseattle

  6. 6 Clay Cook 30 December 2005 @ 12:34 am

    Michael,

    I really think you are on to something with Wink. Well done.

    Clay Cook

  7. 7 Byron MIller 5 January 2006 @ 8:26 am

    Feel free to incorporate mozdex.com search results. If you want to get any special features, have any comments/feedback don’t hesitate to contact me through the feedback url on the site.

    cool project!

  8. 8 rickdog 6 January 2006 @ 11:48 am

    Here’s one for “User Generated Services” collection:
    http://blummy.com, I love it.