Wink is a people search engine that searches for profiles across the Web.
Wink began in 2004 as a social search engine to use input from other people to influence the relevance of Web pages. But in 2006 Wink changed directions to become a people search engine. At the time there were numerous growing social networks and other places online with limited ability to search. Serving those looking to find old friends or anyone with an active online life, Wink searches about one billion profiles across popular social networks and other destinations.
Wink merged with Reunion.com in November, 2008.
Type in someone’s name, location and almost any other fact about them (company, school, club) to find their profile in Wink. Profiles are complied by searching MySpace, LinkedIn, Bebo, Friendster and Live Spaces. To narrow searches users can filter results by age, gender, relationship status or by network.Like competitor spock, users can claim their profiles. Unlike spock, users who claim their profiles have full control over their information. Users can link to any of their social network profiles, blogs, Flickr photos or anything else. This is where the companies differ the most. spock results are primarily a function of pure web search, while Wink’s profiles are often made by its user base. Although with 200 million profiles already, it seems as though Wink’s strategy is NOT slow.
David Beach is a Product Manager and Information Architect. He works for eBay Mobile and is the co-founder of 12seconds.tv.
Beach began his career in 1994 as the Art Director for IUMA, The Internet Underground Music Archive. He then co-founded LVL interactive and I-Storm Studios, developing e-commerce and marketing websites for Disney, Netscape, Cisco, Sun, Philips, E-Trade, DirecTV, Bank of America, The Burning Man Project, Winamp, Fox Network, and Warner Bros. Records. Beach worked for Yahoo Shopping from 2001 to 2006, Wink, People Search from 2006 to 2007, then returned to Yahoo as Senior Manager of the Brickhouse organization in 2007. He now works as the Director of Product Management for eBay Mobile overseeing their flagship iPhone, iPad, and Android products.
Mr. Stewart is an investor and Avalanche Board Member since October 2006. He is the Co-Founder and Chairman of Mezzanine Capital Partners (www.mezzaninecap.com) which specializes in providing venture debt and equity financing to venture backed IT companies.
Concurrently, he is the Founder and President of Asia Pacific Ventures (APV www.apvco.com) and has advised over 350 U.S. venture backed IT start-up companies in entering the Japan/Asia marketplace, raising more than $3 billion in equity, debt and joint venture financing over the past 20 plus years. Mr. Stewart was also the founding General Partner of APV Technology Partners I, II and III with over $200 million in early stage venture funding under management. Some of Mr. Stewarts prior venture capital successes include SiliconStor (acquired by LSI), Lexar Media (acquired by Micron), SecureTax (acquired by Intuit), Okena (acquired by Cisco), Sharewave (acquired by Cirrus Logic), Packet Engines (acquired by Alcatel).
Principal Engineer at Wink