What is Wink?
Wink is a social search engine that offers a People Search and a people powered Web Search. People Search searches across millions of social network profiles and Web Search uses the power of people's tags and bookmarks to influence search results. So they both fit in nicely with Wink's mission to place the power of the internet in the hands of the people who use it.
People Search
What is People Search?
Wink People Search is a way to find the online identity of your friends and contacts. People Search searches across millions of profiles in popular social networks (such as MySpace and Friendster). People Search is not just about names. Many people never use their real names on their online profiles. We know that the vast majority of people try to find others using real names. We support that and are working tirelessly on making sure that experience is the best in the world. However we also recognize that people are looking for others who share common interests. They are looking for community. That community can be in any location. Our job is to help those seeking like minded people and the community best suited for their needs.
There are many different ways that you can use People Search. You can use it to find professional and work contacts, as well as school friends that you've lost contact with. You can even use it to find other people who love the movie Zardoz or a great band that played at your local pub last week. You can find people by job type, location, employer, school, and so on. Wink searches across a growing number of social networks and communities to help you find just the right person.
Where does Wink get the profile information that is shown in People Search?
Wink gets the profile information from crawling the social networks. People Search only displays information that is publicly viewable at the time that Wink extracted the data. This means that if you change the information on your profile after Wink has crawled it, the change will not be displayed in People Search until Wink crawls your profile again.
Can I find phone numbers and addresses on Wink?
Wink People Search is a way to find people's online identities, not their off-line information. There are other services that offer white pages information, but Wink does not.
How do I get my social network profile on Wink's People Search?
Wink must crawl your social network in order for your profile to appear on Wink's People Search. Currently, Wink shows results for Bebo, Friendster, LinkedIn, Live Spaces, and MySpace. If you are on one of these networks and your profile is still not showing up, you might need to be patient and wait for the Wink crawler to find you. Also, check if your profile is marked as private or public. If it is private it might not be included in People Search. If your network is not yet crawled and you would like to request that we crawl it, please submit a request using our feedback form.
There's an offensive profile that I don't want to see any more. What do I do?
You can block any offensive profile by clicking on "block this" next to any profile in the People Search results page. This will keep you from seeing that profile again.
Why can't I find my friend's profile on Wink's People Search?
There are a few reasons that this might be happening.
- Your friend doesn't have a profile on that network.
- Wink hasn't crawled your friend's profile yet.
- Wink hasn't crawled that social network yet.
- Your friend is using a cute screenname and not their real name and you don't know what that cute screenname is.
How do I get my profile removed from Wink's People Search?
Please send us a request via our feedback form, asking for your profile to be removed. Generally it will be removed within 48 hours.
Can you add my favorite social network to Wink's People Search, pretty please?
We'd love to! Right now we are adding networks at a furious pace and are only constrained by how much caffeine our engineers can consume without passing out. Please send in a request using our feedback form and letting us know which network you'd like to see on Wink's People Search.
Wink Profiles
What is the benefit of having a Wink profile?
A Wink profile offers a simple solution for identity management. All you need is a Wink account and you can fill up your profile with all of your personal pages and profiles. Your blog, MySpace, Bebo, YouTube, Yahoo!, del.icio.us, flickr, etc. This makes it easier for people to find you and provides a way for you to control your identity. You can say who or what you are. Once you have a Wink profile you can use the Wink Widget to carry around your identity with you to your blog(s) and social network profiles.
How do I claim my own IDs and sites?
Once you create a Wink profile you can add your own personal links. Examples include: MySpace profile, Flickr photos, blog URL, YouTube profile, LinkedIn profile, ClaimID profile, del.icio.us profile, etc.
How do I add my social network profiles to my Wink profile?
- Make sure you are signed in to your Wink account.
- Click on "My Page" in the header of the page. This will take you to your profile page.
- Next to "Where I'm At..." click on Add a link. This will open up a box.
- Add the URL of the social network profile you would like to add. Make sure that this is the publicly viewable URL, and not the private URL that you use to edit your profile. Click on "Next."
- Edit the title of the page (if you wish) and then click on "Add This Site" to add it to your profile page. It should be added immediately. If it doesn't add, try refreshing the page before you try adding it again.
I entered the wrong URL as one of my personal links. Can I fix it?
You will need to delete it and add it again.
- Make sure you are signed in to your Wink account.
- Click on "My Page" in the header of the page. This will take you to your profile page.
- To the right of the personal link you would like to delete is an "Edit" link. Click on the arrow to the right of that link to open up the Edit options. Click on "Delete this item."
- Click on "Yes" in the pop-up that asks you to confirm that you want to delete this item.
- Once the personal link is gone, follow the steps to add a social network profile to your Wink profile.
Widget
What is the Wink Widget?
The Wink Widget is a way for you to aggregate and show your online identities in one convenient place. The Widget is a piece of code that you can put on your blog or social network profile, and that shows all the personal links that you have claimed on your Wink profile.
Do I need to have a Wink account and profile to put the Wink Widget on my blog or social network profile?
Yes. The Wink Widget shows all the personal links that you have claimed as your own. You must have a Wink profile to obtain the Wink Widget because otherwise how would we know what your online identity is, hmm?
How do I create a widget?
- Make sure you are signed in to your Wink account.
- Click on "My Page" in the header of the page. This will take you to your profile page.
- In your "All about me..." section, you will see a link to "Get the NEW Wink widget." Click on this, which will take you to the widget customization page.
- Pick the widget type you'd like to have -- HTML, Flash, or Static HTML.
- Customize your widget as much or as little as you please. This includes changing the colors and title of the widget.
- Copy the code and place it on your web site or social network profile.
What is the difference between the HTML, Flash and Static HTML code for the Wink Widget?
Some social networks will either strip out certain pieces of HTML or else will disallow certain code from being placed on their sites. For this reason, we have made three different versions of the widget available. The HTML version will generally suit bloggers and others who have full control over the website where they place the widget. The Flash version will suit those who wish to place the widget on services that don't allow javascript. And the Static HTML version is for those who wish to place the widget on a service like MySpace, which disallows a whole bunch of stuff.
I put the widget on my social network profile, but it just looks like code. Is there a version I can use that will work?
Your social network might be stripping out certain pieces of HTML or else disallowing certain code to be place on its site. In general, the Static HTML version should work even when the HTML and Flash versions do not. We would suggest you try this one. If you still have problems, please let us know via the feedback form.
Will the widget work on MySpace?
Yes, it should. Make sure you select the Static HTML option before you copy and paste the code onto your MySpace profile.
How do I turn off the hover preview panel on the widget?
The HTML version of the widget has the option to show the preview panel on hovering over the personal links. If you wish to disable this on your widget, return to the widget creation screen and uncheck the "Show Preview on hover" option. Copy and paste the new code onto your website.
How does Wink fill in the "MyTags" area of the Widget?
The MyTags content comes from the tags that you entered when creating your profile.
Tools
Does Wink People Search have a Firefox search extension?
Yes, we do! Just take a look at the bottom left corner of the Wink home page, and click on the handy-dandy "Install Wink People Search for Firefox" link.
Account
How do I change my password?
To change your password you will need to recover your password, as if you had forgotten it. Follow these steps:
- Click "Sign Out" on top of page (if you are signed in).
- Click "Sign In" on top of page.
- In the "Sign In" popup that appears, you will see "Forgot your password?."
- Click on that and enter your username.
- You should receive an email at the email address you registered with. Make sure that your spam filters will allow email to be received from invite (at) wink.com or you won't get the email.
- Click on the URL in the email you receive and you should be able to enter a new password.
I didn't receive my confirmation email. What do I do?
Use the feedback form to ask us to re-send you the confirmation email.
Collections
What is a Collection?
Collections let you take multiple related tags and links and put them into one larger set. For instance, you may have ten different tags and five additional links related to "Digital Photography". We let you pull them all together into one Collection called "Digital Photography". And we thought it would be cool if you could share your Collections with other people. So if you happen to be an expert in a particular topic and have created a bunch of really excellent tags on a topic, you can "publish" that Collection by selecting it and then clicking Publish. Then if someone clicks on one of your tags, they will get to your collection for Digital Camera, and they can even "watch" it to find out when you add new links.
Web Search
What is Wink Web Search?
Wink is a search engine that integrates tag results from multiple sources such as del.icio.us, Digg, Yahoo MyWeb (and we're adding more). It gives you the freshest information on the web by serving up the most relevant tagged links for your search. We crawl and index tags from all over the web, and serve them up with web results, for a combination of freshness and accuracy. You can also "tag" your results directly in Wink. A tag is similar to a bookmark, but it allows you also annotate any link with words that you associate with that link. For instance, if you tagged www.kodak.com, you could notate it with the terms "camera", "photography" and "film".
What happens when I rate results?
By rating the result of your search query, you help the best results rise to the top and you also help block incorrect, inappropriate or spam content.
How do I block spam in the results?
Occasionally you'll find really bad sites or spam in your search results. If you find a site that is completely wrong or inappropriate, click on the "Block" symbol (red circle with the line through it) to purge that result. This helps make the search results better for everyone.
Need more help?
I have a question that isn't covered here. What do I do?
I have a question that isn't covered here. What do I do?
If you have a question that isn't covered in this FAQ, please join our Discussion Group and submit your question there. If your question is private and you don't want to share it openly, then please contact us using our feedback form.
