Find a Person on Social Networks and other Online Communities

Social Networks are a good place to look when searching for people. Whether it's someone you met yesterday or someone you lost track of in high school, there's a good chance they are on a social network. But which one? Wink is the most complete search engine in the world for searching the social networks.

Search social networks for free

  • Wink searches several social networks at the same time. Find results from MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, Hi5, Bebo, LinkedIn, and more.
  • Lookup friends in a database of over 400 million people.
  • With Wink Social Network Search, you don't just find your old friends, you can also contact them immediately.

More Info:
Tips, Names and screennames, Interests and other information, Friends of friends

Tips to help you search social networks
  • If you know information about their hometown or school, try including that in the search as well.
  • You can search by sex, age, relationship status
  • Include interests, favorite music, movies, books, hobbies, and details like that in the search as well.
  • Search for maiden name as well as married name.
  • If you don't see who you're looking for, remove some of the information to widen your search - for example remove school or hobbies.
  • Your friend might not have included their name on their profile. Searching using other details but excluding name might help you find them.
  • If your friend has a very common name, try searching by other things you know about them - what school they went to, what city they live in, etc.
  • Remember that if you are on a social network, only post information and photos you are comfortable having people see.

Names and screennames
Try searching on the person's name first. However, this will not always bring up the person you are looking for as people don't always put their full name on their profile. For example, if you do a myspace people search, many people are using screennames and not their full name. If you don't get the person you are looking for, try variations of the name such as removing the last name or using a nickname. Also try location to help narrow the search results.

Interests and other information
If a name and location search don't turn up the person you are looking for, try searching using other information as well. Try to be as specific as possible to start with and make the search more general if the results are too narrow. You can try to refine the results by adding interests you know that the person is interested in – such as favorite movies or hobbies.

Friends of friends
Groups of friends often stick together. You can also try searching for someone by searching for mutual friends or people that you know are their friends and trying to find the person on their friend lists. You can then contact the person. This is called foafing (friend of a friend) and is a common way to re-connect with lost friends.