Wink Beta

Thanks to the folks at Techcruch I was able to jump on the beta of Wink. Wink is a new search tool that allows search results to be tagged, ranked and organized. Much like other social bookmarking sites, Wink relies on user metadata to make the search concept more effective.

I was testing the term "Florence", a popular travel destination that I am currently researching. The results are interesting, at the top it lists related tags or terms. The next section lists user submitted links that allows you to add to it by tagging their URL and rate it relevant. Next the normal web search terms are listed with the same tagging and rating options.

I can see the more people that use this, the better results you will get. Nice concept and a real good interface. Clean and intuitive, the wink site requires you to login to make sure you store all tags and ratings. My Page is the list of wink added sites with tags you have added. We have seen this before, but I like the integration of web and user related tags and urls.

You can also create a search set with multiple links. This is useful if you are researching a trip (I am off to Italy soon) or want to collect links. I had some mixed results with this feature, and as a good beta tester, I submitted feedback for the error I got. Beta is fun.

Social bookmarking is a well populated space and other sites have some traction, but the clean interface and simple to use search and tagging make this an good alternative.

I will continue to bang on the site to see what I can break next.

Technorati Tags: wink, social, bookmarking, tag, tagging, techcrunch