Wink Technologies

Wink Technologies is the operator of Wink, a community-based social search engine. It provides people search across social networks, and Web search based on user input. Wink is different from conventional search engines in that the relevant results are derived not just from machine algorithms, but directly from user input, such as social bookmarking, voting up or down, or blocking results that are considered to be spam, thus allowing users to collectively create their own search engine. Wink released an early beta of the service on December 22, 2005 and formally launched Wink beta 2 on September 6, 2006. Wink was recognized by Business 2.0 as an innovator in social search.
Functionality
Wink users can search across Web sites submitted by fellow users and gathered through analysis of bookmarks and/or tags from other social services including Digg, Slashdot, Furl, Yahoo MyWeb, and others. Users can bookmark results as personal favorites, add tags that relate to the site, or vote for or against each result with a thumb up or a thumb down respectively. Wink results are added onto search results from Google to give users a full search experience in one place.
Wink People Search allows users to search for people across social networks including MySpace, LinkedIn, Bebo, Friendster and others.
Wink people search allows users to search by name, and also by interest, location, and other information published in users profiles. Wink people search allows users to find others who have similar interests and find out what social network they can be found on.
Significance
Wink has only been formally available for a short period and has not acquired a large following to date, however the capabilities demonstrated by the company are in an area, social search that is receiving attention as a potentially important development in web search.
History
Wink was incorporated on August 19, 2004 to work on ways to apply user input to improve the way that Web search is done. has developed unique techniques in information retrieval and search engine architecture designed to improve search results based on input from users. Wink’s PeopleRank technology analyzes which pages people like or don’t like to determine relevant results. Wink's development team includes developers from Inktomi, Yahoo, Google, and Excite.
On December 22, 2005 the company released the first beta of its social search service.
On September 6, 2006 the company released the second beta of its service, adding Wink collections.
On November 10, 2006 the company released 'Wink People Search' which provides search across multiple social networks such as MySpace, Bebo, Friendster and LinkedIn.
On March 19, 2007 it was reported that the company would focus completely on people search and that it was repurchasing some shares from existing investors.
On April 30, 2007 Reunion.com announced an agreement with Wink to provide Wink's people profiles to Reunion's members and affiliates.
On November 3, 2007 Reunion.com announced an agreement to merge with Wink.
Additional information
Wink investors include PayPal veterans Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel.

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