Reunion.com and Wink have merged to form a comprehensive online platform for people looking to find each other on the Web. An entirely new brand and Web site will launch early next year to cement the unique positioning of this joint company as the leader in people search, providing users with access to a combined total of more than 700 million profiles that span social networks, online communities, and other proprietary sources.

The recent explosion of social networks has created a multitude of options for people to establish online identities – making it that much more challenging to find people you’re looking for. The new joint company will leverage its wide array of cutting-edge technologies to search the entire Web and across networks to help you find everyone – no matter what sites they are using.

“This deal is the next step in our company’s evolution to bring a groundbreaking mix of people search services to consumers across multiple online networks,” said Jeffrey Tinsley, founder and chief executive officer of Reunion.com. “With five billion searches across the Web each month, the people search vertical is bigger than any other. Our goal is to create the definitive people search service that creates a single source for connecting with people. In the coming months, we’ll 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.”

Wink’s superior search results integrate a number of online sources and cover the world’s largest social networks, including MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Friendster, Bebo, Live Spaces, Yahoo!360, Xanga, and Twitter. Wink’s experienced team of search engineers, who came from Yahoo!, Inktomi, Excite, and Google, have developed proprietary algorithms and indexing techniques to capture the full text and structure of public profiles across the Web to make them quickly and easily searchable.

“Through this merger, we’re redefining the people search space by bridging existing social networks and providing consumers with the tools they need to find, be found, and stay connected,” said Michael Tanne, chief executive officer of Wink. “We’re aiming to create an entirely new online experience that simplifies people’s lives by making it easy to find and keep up with everyone they know. There will be exciting developments in the coming months as we integrate our strengths and push our business forward.”

Reunion.com, a profitable company with a unique business model in the people search category, enjoys more than 12 million unique visitors monthly and is ranked in the top 100 most visited sites on the Web. By combining the power of Wink’s technology with Reunion.com’s reach and user base of 50 million members, the joint company is in the unique position to leverage best-in-class people search and a fast-growing audience to continue scaling its business. The two companies will continue to look for opportunities to bring innovative technology solutions and partners together to meet the evolving needs of the customers who drive this valuable market.