Media Coverage

Google's Downfall is the Rise of Vertical Search

AltSearchEngines
By Jeff Tinsley
Jan. 26, 2009

Mother, Son Reunited After 50 Years

Hernando Today
Kyle Martin
Dec. 16, 2008

Hunter Gathers

INTERNET: People-search site Reunion expands reach with acquisition of Wink.

Los Angeles Business Journal
Charles Proctor
Nov. 24, 2008

From his office on the top floor of a Brentwood high-rise, Jeffrey Tinsley has a view of tens of thousands of people who live in Los Angeles' sprawling Westside. And if any of them want to find any of the others online, Tinsley hopes they come to his Web site.

Reunion.com Inc., a nascent search engine company where Tinsley is chief executive, is a leader in what analysts said is a large but mostly untapped market: people search. While search engines like Google Inc. excel at finding information and Web sites, Reunion focuses on finding people – where they are and what they're up to.

Now, the company is positioning itself to dominate the market thanks to its recent acquisition of Wink.com, a Bay Area startup search site that should catapult Reunion to the upper echelons of the people-search sector.

Reunion searches work this way: Users who type in a query send the company's technology trolling through public documents, social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, and other Internet resources. Reunion then compiles all the results on one screen.

"The chance of finding anybody on the Web is greatest here," said Tinsley, wearing jeans and a beat-up black baseball cap with his company's name stenciled across the top. "You're not going to find them on Google. You're not going to find them on MySpace or Facebook."

Before it acquired Wink, Reunion had the capability to find about 225 million people online. Now it can sort through more than 700 million. By comparison, people-search engine Spock Networks Inc., a close competitor of Reunion, can search about 500 million profiles.

But while the Wink deal should help Reunion's reliability, the company can't yet claim to be the de facto people-search engine on the Web, said Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst with Emarketer.

Williamson said Reunion must still vie with other people-oriented search companies while also dealing with users who go to behemoths like Google as their default choice for search.

Reunion's trip toward the top hasn't been without bumps.

The company came under fire over the summer when a search revealed the name of a 4-year-old child. The result came from public records, even though Reunion has a policy against revealing public record data on minors.

Tinsley, who called the incident an "anomaly," said the company is acting to prevent that from happening again.

Also, three individuals filed a class-action lawsuit in July against Reunion alleging the company engaged in "false and deceptive" marketing practices by sending emails that purported to be from other Reunion users inviting the recipient to join.

A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit earlier this month, but the plaintiffs have amended the complaint and refiled it.

People Search Engines Take on LinkedIn

MediaPost's Online Media Daily
Laurie Sullivan
Nov. 6, 2008

People search engine Spock is working on a service that will give users access to public records stored in public databases across the Web.

The service, scheduled to launch mid-January, will have a $1.99 monthly service fee. Subscribers will gain access to links and data mined from government and municipality databases such as mortgage brokers and courthouses, as well as social network pages at MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn.

The public records search tool is one in a series of paid services that the Redwood City, Calif.-based company plans to launch in the coming year. Earlier this month, it rolled out a service that scans Gmail accounts to locate friends across the Web.

Similar to the way Google Alerts track posts to the Web about celebrities, Spock's search tool builds alerts on friends based on their email address, aggregates the information, and sends the subscriber updates on Web locations and social networks used. Future plans will offer more premium services such as the ability to contact users through mutual friends, according to Jay Bhatti, Spock cofounder. "Sort of like LinkedIn," He said. "While they do it for professionals, we want to offer that service for anyone in the world."

It's the promise of what paid search services can deliver that's fueling the move by people search engines, according to Debra Aho Williamson, senior analyst at eMarketer. "When you're looking for information specifically about people, the easiest way to find it is through a people-specific search engine," she said. "They all have social aspects with aspirations of offering premium services similar to those see on LinkedIn, but can they deliver? Reunion, too, is trying to become more like a social network, as we have seen with the acquisition of Wink."

Reunion.com, Santa Monica, Calif.--which announced earlier this week that it would acquire Wink, a Mountain View, Calif.-based people search site--has plans to offer a host of new services when it emerges rebranded early next year.

The new company combines Wink's 700 million individual profiles and Web-crawling capabilities, and Reunion's 50 million members. Scheduled to unveil in February, the services will pull personal and professional information from sites like LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook and Twitter, as well as public records. "We have a very similar LinkedIn-style business model," said Jeff Tinsley, Reunion CEO and founder. "New features being planned for the re-launch center on finding all the people you have known throughout your entire life across every single site."

Most services will remain free, but a handful of paid features will give consumers a little extra. Building the system means that engineers will rip out Reunion's core infrastructure and replace it with Wink's. Tinsley said Reunion did not have the Web-crawling technology that extracts people-specific information. "Wink's technology is sophisticated--something we would have never been able to build ourselves," he said, describing the engineers who built the system as "Google/Yahoo-like," some with Ph.D.s, "and we just couldn't have done it ourselves in-house. It would have taken years."

Online Profile Searches Made Easy By Wink and Reunion

Trends Updates
Jaiyant Cavale
Nov. 5, 2008

Reunion.com Buys Wink.com To Create A Merged Social Network/Search Engine

Pulse 2.0
Amit Chowdhry
Nov. 4, 2008

Reunion.com Merges with Wink Technologies

Financial Deals Tracker
Staff
Nov. 4, 2008

Deal In Brief

Reunion.com, Inc., an operator of a social networking website, has merged with Wink Technologies, Inc., a people search engine, to form an online platform for people looking to find each other on the web. Both the companies are based in the US.

Deal Type - Merger
Deal Status - Completed: 2008-11-03

Deal Participants

Target 1 (Company) Reunion.com, Inc.
Target 2 (Company) Wink Technologies, Inc.

Deal Rationale

The transaction would help both the companies to bring a mix of people search services to consumers across multiple online networks. It would also help companies to expand their business.

Jeffrey Tinsley on Revamping Reunion.com, Buying Wink, Finding People

The Deal & Tech Confidential
Mary Kathleen Flynn
Nov. 4, 2008

People Search Engine Reunion.com Acquires Wink

Dow Jones VentureWire
Tomio Geron
Nov. 4, 2008

Reunion.com Inc. has acquired smaller rival Wink Technologies Inc. in an attempt to build a dominant people-search engine.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

In April 2007, Reunion raised $25 million in Series A financing from Oak Investment Partners. The company previously raised angel funding from former MySpace.com chairman Richard Rosenblatt and eForce Media Chief Executive Andy Mazzarella.

Wink has received about $6 million from Cambrian Ventures and Greylock Partners. The investors could not immediately be reached for comment.

Reunion was founded in 2002 more as a social network, but about a year about starting the business, it began to switch to people search, which Reunion founder and Chief Executive Jeffrey Tinsley said is a lucrative and relatively untapped area of search.

Reunion is profitable and expects to generate more than $50 million in revenue this year and $100 million next year with "very healthy profit margins," Tinsley said.

The majority of Reunion's revenue is from subscriptions, as the company has more than 1 million paying subscribers. The company also runs advertisements.

"We love that (subscription) model - if you can pull it off," Tinsley said. "It's not as subject to changes in the economy as the advertising model is."

Reunion has collected about 500 million profiles and Wink has about 200 million.

Reunion, which after the acquisition will have about 125 people including Wink's 12 employees, plans to relaunch its site and Wink as a newly branded site next year.

Tinsley said there is still much room to grow in people search, since Reunion targets an older demographic than the typical social network crowd. More than 90% of the site's visitors are over 25 years old, more than 50% are over 35 and about 60% are female.

"We do see significant ad growth opportunity because the audience we're reaching is very different from other social sites," Tinsley said.

Wink, which specializes in extracting information from social sites such as Facebook, Flickr and the like, already generated advertising rates of more than $10 per one thousand views, Tinsley said. Reunion's rates are "many many times that," he added.

Reunion.com had about 9.5 million unique visitors in September compared to about 283,000 for Wink and about 889,000 for competitor Spock.com Inc., according to Compete.com.

Reunion.com and Wink to Merge People-Finding Services

DailyVista
Stephanie Jacoby
Nov. 4, 2008

Reunion.com, an online people search service, and Wink, a similar people search engine, announced that they have merged to form one comprehensive online platform, according to the company.

As part of the merger deal, the companies will launch a new brand and Web site early next year to gain a further foothold as a leader in searching for people and profiles from various social networks, online communities and other sources throughout the world.

Los Altos, Calif.-based Wink is a people search engine that allows its users to search for people from more than 500 million profiles. Wink also has a patent-pending PeopleRank technology, which analyzes people's input to continually refine the search results.

Santa Monica, Calif.-based Reunion.com is a leading people search service that helps users find, reconnect and keep in touch with old friends, family, classmates and business contacts. The Web site boasts more than 50 million members and continues to grow every month.

Reunion.com Founder and Chief Executive Officer Jeff Tinsley told DailyVista that the Web site was already strategically partnered with Wink, and decided to follow through with the merger due to the recognized value of its extended relationship.

"Between Wink's superior people search technology and Reunion's expansive subscriber base, the companies identified strong synergies that would benefit both Wink and Reunion's subscribers, partners and advertisers," he said. "We will continue to evaluate the needs of our members and develop services in the area of reunions as necessary."

Tinsley said that most of Reunion.com's efforts have been online, advertising via all major portals, ad networks and search providers. He added that television testing has been limited thus far.

"In the coming months, Reunion.com will work closely with Wink to combine our company strengths, integrate best-of-breed technologies and offer our users the most robust service available to find people," Tinsley said. "Reunion.com sees the current marketplace as an opportunity to leverage our unique business model and create significant partnerships."

He cited that in a recession, people tend to want to reach out and connect, and that staying connected will become even more important in the future. Tinsley believes that Reunion.com's service may be not only recession-proof, but may actively benefit from people seeking out relationships from their past.

Tinsley confirmed that San Francisco-based Blanc & Otus currently handles Reunion.com's public relations initiatives and that the company is not currently outsourcing project work but is always looking for promising strategic partnerships, like its relationship with Wink.

Reunion.com and Wink Merge to Create New Breed of People Search

Sociable Blog
Social Guy
Nov. 4, 2008

Wink and Reunion.com to Launch New People Search Engine

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Staff
Nov. 4, 2008

Reunion.com Buys People Search Engine Wink.com

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Nov. 4, 2008

*Picked up by TechNews.AM

Wink, Reunion Merge to Create New Brand

MediaPost’s Online Media Daily
Laurie Sullivan
Nov. 3, 2008

Search engine company Wink Technologies and Reunion, a social networking site, have merged to create a hybrid site and brand that will debut in early 2009, the companies said Monday.

The agreement expands on a multiyear agreement signed last year that gave members of Santa Monica, Calif.-based Reunion access to Mountain View, Calif.-based Wink's people search queries.

The combined companies and technologies will let users tap into more than 700 million profiles that span social networks, online communities, and more. It will offer the features through "a new online experience that simplifies people's lives by making it easy to find and keep up with everyone they know," said Michael Tanne, Wink CEO, in a statement.

People Search Sites Reunion.com, Wink Agree to Merger

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Nov. 3, 2008

Reunion.com and Wink Hook-Up

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Nov. 3, 2008

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Nov. 3, 2008

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Nov. 3, 2008

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Nov. 3, 2008

*Picked up by: The Washington Post, socialmediaBiz, Social Networking Watch, Quick Pint, TechAddress

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Nov. 3, 2008

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Nov. 3, 2008

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Nov. 3, 2008

*Picked up by: The Industry Standard

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Nov. 3, 2008

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Nov. 3, 2008

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