Democratizing Search

As a social search engine, Wink lets people decide what is most relevant, because we’re trying to democratize search. No matter where you are, where you come from or what your role in the world, Wink gives you a voice to say what you think is important

We’re all part of a global community. We started Wink with the dream that someone anywhere in the world could search and find out what other people are discovering on any topic. Whether it’s a fascination with sports cars, or to learn to program in Ruby, to learn about agriculture or health, they would be able to find it at Wink.


Wink Visitors

We are excited by how fast a service can go global with the Web today. In the first two weeks following the release of Wink beta 2 we had visitors from 156 countries. Wow, to think that we can touch people everywhere from Albania, Bangladesh, Cuba, Denmark, Ethiopia, … to Zimbabwe. This map shows the places from where the most visitors accessed Wink in those first two weeks.

This can really help level the playing field as people from all over can contribute to our search results. We keep track and then assemble the best results for the next person that comes along. (Wink is only available in English so far - sorry, we’re just a small company so far. But we do try to support tags in multiple languages.)

It is troubling to look at that map and see how under-represented are the people of Africa. We have users in Honduras, Croatia, Cambodia and Azerbaijan, but looking at traffic from around the world really says something about their situation. We hope for peace and opportunity for people in Africa.

Over time, Wink will be available to people everywhere and it will give all of us a chance to learn about what others know and care about. … in as many languages as possible!

Peace,
Michael

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5 October 2006 | beta, observations, Wink | Comments

3 Responses to “Democratizing Search”

  1. 1 David Mackey 6 October 2006 @ 11:02 am

    Keep up the good work.

  2. 2 Anonymous 8 October 2006 @ 6:48 pm

    You guys have got to change the picture on Techmeme. Everytime I see your same old logo, I think that I’ve already read an article you’ve posted. I don’t think I’m the only one…

    Techmeme is dynamic by nature. People drop in to see what’s new and static images subconsciously tell us nothing’s new. Try changing the image and see if it attracts more visitors.

    I have no idea what to change the image to, maybe even having the update date in the image will suffice.

  3. 3 Michael Tanne 12 October 2006 @ 12:20 pm

    The Techmeme sponsorship displays the company logo and a post. The logo identifies who the sponsor is, and the post should be interesting. You are absolutely right that it should be dynamic. The post is intended to be, but perhaps the image could be as well.

    thanks