| Acquired by | Reunion.com |
| Date | 11/08 |
| Terms | Cash and Stock |
| Website | Wink.com |
| Blog | blog.wink.com |
| Category | Web |
| Employees |
| Series A, 1/05 Cambrian Ventures Greylock | $6.2M |
Reworking its entire operation in 2006, Wink went from being a social search to a people search engine. With its target demographic those looking to find old friends or anyone with an active online life, Wink searches popular social networks and other destinations and then aggregates and consolidates information into one profile per individual. A year after launch Wink had 200 million unique people profiled. Wink is counting on a large people search market to bring in ad revenue despite claims that identity searches will yield much lower ad clicks than product search. CEO Michael Tanne says Wink can get $2 in revenue per 1,000 impressions.In 2005 Wink received $6.2 million from Cambrian Ventures and Greylock Partners, but proceeded to buy back stock when it changed to a people search engine. Rumors had it that investors were unhappy with progress, yet Wink maintains they wanted to offer them a way out simply because product strategy had changed drastically since previous funding rounds. Both institutions still retain stock in Wink.Primary competitors include: Spock, Zoominfo, Streakr, Copenda and LinkedIn.
Wink merged with Reunion.com in November, 2008 and will be relaunching as a new brandname in early 2009.
| Website | Wink.com |
| Stage | Live |
| Launch Date | July 18, 2007 |
| Tags | search |
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.
