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did anyone actually use Hunch seriously?
by vaksel 15y ago
did anyone actually use Hunch seriously?
- charlemagne 15y agoTaking this question further, what did Hunch help you do? I tried it early and passed, really interested to hear what it has done for others.
- smokinn 15y agoI tried it a couple of times too. First time I figured it was basically a slightly better stumbleupon. Next time I tried it was still the same thing and never went back.
- suking 15y agoNo freaking kidding - only thing I saw the founder do was interview people on TC. Never heard anyone mention hunch outside of those interviews. What is ebay thinking?
- hassy 15y ago> What is ebay thinking? Impressive back-end tech (the recommendation engine) that can now process millions and millions of items on eBay to help increase sales (something like a quarter of Amazon's sales come from recommendations).
- suking 15y agoVery hard to imagine ebay doesn't already do a good job of this with their years of experience. I mean it's possible, but I doubt it.
- smokinn 15y ago80 million dollars is a lot to pay for a recommendation engine. Netflix had their own and paid a million dollars as prize payout for an absolutely state of the art system. If it really was just a tech acquisition they massively overpaid.
- hassy 15y agoDon't forget that Hunch's system is real-time (this is very hard), and is more than just scalable collaborative filtering for items of the same kind. They can ingest a Twitter or Facebook profile, infer your "taste profile", and start recommending things instantly; "things" meaning books, films, music, events, places etc etc.
- suking 15y agoI don't believe real time is very hard. Something that ebay can' already do. And if they can't already do it, how will hunch come in and solve it. It would probably require major changes to db's etc if that is why ebay can't already do it.
- hassy 15y ago> I don't believe real time is very hard. At scale it is. More here: http://www.quora.com/Hunch/Is-Hunch-actually-doing-anything-technically-interesting/answer/Hasan-Veldstra http://www.quora.com/Hunch/Is-Hunch-actually-doing-anything-... (this one got a vote from one of the founders) http://hassy.posterous.com/my-favorite-startups-hunch http://hassy.posterous.com/my-favorite-startups-hunch
- flinty 15y agoHow does that vary much from what Etsy did with their gift recommendations application based on your/friend's facebook profile
- achompas 15y agoSee my above reply to suking--$80m is kind of a bargain.
- mikeklaas 15y agoAs someone who builds recommender systems for a living, let me assure you that the output of the netflix prize was perhaps 10% of what you need to actually build a good recommendations product.
- achompas 15y agoApple bought the tech behind Siri for $200m in 2010. MS bought Powerset (and their NLP-type search engine) for $100m in 2008. They also bought Farecast (travel pricing forecasting) for $75-115m in 2008. Hunch for $80m is a steal, as far as talent acquisitions go. EDIT: I'm not sure if they were product or talent acquisitions, but does it really matter? All companies listed above obtained state-of-the-art algorithms and the teams that developed them.
- sjs 15y agoI frequent HN, Reddit, Twitter, etc. and have heard the name Hunch once or twice, but have no idea what they do and don't know anyone who uses it. There's a different kind of bubble in the valley, it's a contained ecosystem that people get caught up in. Similar to the social bubble surrounding a college or church. People inside the bubble often cannot see the forest from the trees. In the bubble it's easy to get to know all the trees, but from the outside it's just a forest and few trees are easily recognized or stand out from the others at all.