David Beach's Blog

Wink #3 of Time Magazine's Top 10 Websites of the Year!

Whoa! Wink was named by Time magazine as one of the top ten web sites of the year! Number three to be exact. Well that's pretty darn satisfying! Congratulations to Michael and everyone on the Wink team. I'm very happy for you guys.

"#3. Wink.com

With more than 200 million people signed up for social networks, how can you quickly find your best buddy from second grade, that guy you dated in high school, or your co-worker from three jobs ago? The people search engine Wink.com sorts through all of these profiles so you can easily find and connect online with long lost friends. Recent upgrades to the site also allow users to control their search profiles on the Wink search engine. Delete that unflattering picture, remove the rude post, and present yourself as you'd like to be seen — instead of letting the search engine take complete control."

TechCrunch Party 7

Well the TechCrunch party at August Capital was last night. I lost my voice giving demos of the new Wink for 6 hours. To be honest my expectations weren't that high. I've been to things like this before and usually people are more interested in the booze than what anyone has to say. But this was different. There were tons of folks curious and excited about what we were doing. I think that speaks to how well the open guest list works.

I gave demo after demo of our new search engine and the other features that we're building. Even though we're about half way complete, people really seemed to get it. They could see right away the difference and the benefit of "people powered" search.

There were many familiar faces... several from Yahoo!, several others from another life, and then those guys whose blogs I read or books I've read. Funny thing. The first Wink demo that I gave was to Robert Scoble with his PodTech video camera in my face. I was a bit unprepared... I hoped to warm up with a few solitary geeks first, but no. I jumped in and have no idea what I said.. I'm sure I stammered and flubbed my way through. Plus the room was so loud. All the new code hadn't been pushed yet and the network was slow... not the best way to get the evening off the ground. After a short while, I got it down. I was in demo mode. I wished that Scoble came back for a do-over.

So I had a great time. I was feeling a bit misanthropic on the drive up to Sand Hill. I wanted to keep working on the product, not socialize. But that feeling quickly faded away. Hanging out with the Wink team and the enthusiastic response to what we've been doing was the remedy.

more of my photos... all techcrunch7 photos