Wink Wins People Search Engine Smackdown
Web Worker Daily posted a review “Testing the People Search Engines” and concluded that Wink was the winner. Here’s what Mike Gunderloy had to say:
Wink was the exception in this group. It’s very quick at what it does, and very good at providing just a few, targeted results. With an easy-to-remember URL, it’s a good starting place. If you want to add just one people-searching site to your repertoire, on top of whatever general-purpose search engine you already use, Wink would be the one that I’d start with.
Om Malik posted about the review as: The People Search Engine Smackdown at GigaOm.
There are many ways to find people online - and it is a genuine need. Some services provide more detailed information like your street address and phone number, or other public data. For the searcher, the more the better. For the person being searched, they may feel uneasy if they are concerned about privacy. What Wink - and several others I think - are trying to do is provide search across the more social part of the Web. It makes sense to start with the social networks and grow out from there. There are already over 300 million profiles on social networks and then hundreds of millions beyond that in other kinds of places online - without getting into the White pages.
We’ve had may very nice notes from users who have found long lost friends or family members or classmates. And we’ll keep making it better.
While it’s unrealistic to think everyone will come create their own profile, there is a way for anyone who wants to manage what information is posted about them. Wink lets you claim and update your profile, which you can do here.
Cheers,
Michael
Tags: peoplesearch, wink.com, wink, people search,
Wink People Search Selected by PC Magazine in Top 100
As the need to find people becomes more common, people are associating the name Wink with People Search. PC Magazine just listed Wink as one of its Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites. This is a great list of sites that are new - some already well known to people who spend a lot of time online, some just being discovered. Here’s what PC Magazine editor Kyle Monson had to say:
Our list of the new and/or undiscovered Web sites that have grabbed our attention this year. You’ll see a large collection of Web applications and tech sites, excellent blogs, offbeat social networks, and, as always, a handful of addictive Flash games for those slow days at work.
Some of these sites are completely under the radar and get very little traffic. Others are hugely popular within a specific demographic. But all of them deserve to be in your bookmarks.
Thanks PC Magazine!
If you haven’t claimed your Wink profile yet, it’s an easy way to manage how you want to be seen online. Just click here.
Cheers,
Michael
Tags: peoplesearch, wink.com, wink, people search,
People Search News
People Search has been in the news lately. Wink People Search is one of the first services that let you find people across social networks and other places on the Web. There are now several people search services available.
A recent story in the BBC covered the space well:
Web Search Engines Get Personal
With Wink, you can claim your own profile on the Web so that you can manage how others see you online. You can decide which of your places and links to include: MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, linkedIn, Friendster, Hi5, Xanga, Twitter, your blog, etc.
Wink has 215,000,000 people profiles and growing. So we should be able to find most people. And if we can’t find them now, we will be able to soon.
If you have found someone online using Wink, please share your story at feedback@wink.com
Cheers,
Michael
Tags: peoplesearch, wink.com, wink, people search,
Wink People Search Reaches 200 Million People
Wink Maintains Lead as First and Largest People Search Engine Mountain View, CA (PRWEB) August 8, 2007 — Wink Technologies, Inc., today announced that Wink People Search has reached the milestone of providing search across the full text of 200 million people profiles from the World Wide Web. Wink People Search allows people to find friends or business contacts based on name, location, interests, tags, school, work, and other profile information. Finding and connecting with people online is becoming more important as social networking, blogging and other forms of online community continue to grow.
Wink People Search has doubled the number of people it searches since it launched in November of 2006. To find people online, Wink has cooperated with many of the world’s largest social networks, including including MySpace, LinkedIn, Friendster, Bebo, Live Spaces, Yahoo!360, Xanga, Twitter and more. To satisfy followers of celebrity news and the “internet famous,” Wink has included in the results are Web sources such as Wikipedia and IMDB. Wink continues to add sources at an increasing rate, planning eventually to include all of the billions of places people show up on the Web.
 The goal of Wink is to help people connect online and learn about people they meet, work with or are just find interesting  |
“The goal of Wink is to help people connect online and learn about people they meet, work with or are just find interesting,” said Michael Tanne, CEO of Wink. “We also make sure that people who are found in our search engine have control over their profile and the information that is included in it.”
Wink users can sign up and claim their own profiles in order to manage their online presence, and have control over what is displayed about them on the Web.
In addition to being the largest people search engine, Wink is also the most flexible. Wink’s experienced team of search engineers from Yahoo!, Inktomi, Excite, and Google have developed proprietary algorithms and indexing techniques which capture the full text and structure of profiles to make them quickly searchable. Whether you want to locate an old friend, find fans of your hometown football team while living in a new city, or seek out people who share your hobbies and interests, Wink searches hundreds of millions people profiles from across the Internet to help you learn about and connect with other people.
Tags: peoplesearch, wink.com, wink, people search,