Date:12/07/2009 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2009/07/12/stories/2009071256151200.htm
Front Page A site that taps into the wisdom of the crowd Sruthi Krishnan "Hunch.com helps you make decisions" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Effectiveness of hunch keeps increasing over time It has provisions to add any language topic -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHENNAI: Which style of jeans will make my legs look longer? Which ugly car should I make fun of? Which philosophical problem will I find interesting? Faced with an increasing array of choices, decision-making could get complicated. What if you could log on to the Internet, type a question and get an answer? Hunch.com, launched recently, helps you make decisions, and it gets smarter the more you use it, according to its creators. Questions galore Hunch taps into the wisdom of the crowd - the idea that the crowd collectively is smarter than its smartest member. If many people with your taste and personality think that bell-bottoms will make your legs look longer, there is a good chance that you too might. So, hunch asks you various questions, while attempting to pare down the options and rank the remaining ones. Likewise, all other users answer questions; as more people use it, hunch learns more. This idea is similar to the one used on sites selling books that have a feature which says 'Books you may like.' This recommendation is based on the information collected about the likes of other users who made similar purchases as you did. Common misconception Hunch also asks you questions about yourself to learn more about you, and to use this information to make better decisions. The idea for hunch.com is a collaborative process, says Caterina Fake, co-founder. "It's a common misconception that ideas come about in some 'Eureka' moment to a single person, but generally the way they happen is iteration after iteration over many months, and this was the case with hunch." Success rate The effectiveness of hunch keeps increasing over time. "The best metric we have for the accuracy of hunch's results is what we call the 'success rate' which we define as: the percentage of topic plays where a user clicks 'Yes' to one of the top three results and doesn't click 'No' to one of them," says Ms. Fake. More topics When the preview site was launched, the success rate was 70 per cent, she says. Now it is 81. The number of topics like 'Should I take leave more often' has increased from 500 to 3,500. "This is based on a total of 16,17,450 topic plays and 13,43,654 feedbacks - enough data to give us confidence in the numbers." Multilanguage site Hunch has provisions to add any language topic, says Ms. Fake. "As Indian language topics are added, we will start building out an Indian part of the site." Eventually it will become a multilanguage site. Serious decisions When will users take serious decisions based on hunch, as it is a novelty now? "Dozens of decisions ranging from which golf clubs to buy to books for vacation destinations are being made on hunch every day. "People have bought grills based on hunch recommendations and booked flights! So, I do not agree that hunch is a novelty." To unsubscribe send a message to [email protected] with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in
