Special Features
Introducing Hunch.com
What is Hunch?Hunch is a decision-making site that gets smarter the more it’s used.
After asking you 10 questions or fewer, Hunch will propose a concrete and customized result for hundreds of decisions of every kind: What kind of car should I buy? Should I switch to a Mac? Should I dump my boyfriend? Where should I go on vacation? Should I get a tattoo?
Hunch uses machine learning to get smarter in two ways:
User contributions train Hunch to be smarter overall. Contributions can take many forms, from correcting a fact that Hunch got wrong, to suggesting new decision topics to feature, follow-up questions to ask or decision results to propose.
The more Hunch learns about each individual user’s personality and preferences, the better Hunch can customize decision results for that user. It’s like a friend getting to know someone’s taste and preferences over time, so they can provide sound and trusted advice.
What problem does Hunch solve?
To make an informed decision without having to turn to lots of external time-consuming sources of information.
What stage is Hunch in?
Hunch began an invite-only beta preview period on March 27, 2009. Hunch is now open to the public.
Hunch currently has about 2,400 decision topics, 14,000 follow-up questions, and more than 50,000 possible decision outcomes. Most of these were contributed by beta preview users over the last few months.
As more people use Hunch, it will become both smarter about what it knows and broader in the scope of decision topics available.
How will Hunch make money?
Some of the decision result pages on Hunch link to external sites where users can purchase the product or service that Hunch proposed. If they do, Hunch may earn a referral fee from the merchant.
The presence of a link to a retailer has no effect on the decision outcomes Hunch proposes. Within a given decision topic, it’s likely that some result pages will link to an online retailer, and others won’t. Some topics don’t have these sorts of links at all.
How is Hunch different from other sites?
Hunch helps its users make decisions of every kind that are customized to them.
Hunch gets smarter by harnessing the collective knowledge of the entire Hunch community.
For each decision, Hunch asks a series of structured follow-up questions leading to a concrete decision result.
What’s the history of Hunch and who is behind it?
Hunch is based in New York City.
Hunch has a 10 person team. The core algorithm was built by MIT computer scientists with backgrounds in machine learning. Hunch’s design and product functionality are led by Flickr Co-founder Caterina Fake, who is a Hunch Co-founder and Chief Product Officer.
