Innovative new search engine launched
This week saw the release of Hunch, a website billed as the internet’s first 'user-dependent' search engine.
Hunch, created by a team of graduates from the Massachusetts Institution of Technology, asks users to answer a series of personality questions when they open an account on the site. These queries range from the mundane, such as 'What is your favourite colour?' to more surreal questions like 'Do you consider yourself a success?'
Hunch then builds a profile of a use and applies this data to further searches. Users answer a series of questions related to their search to determine the outcome of the result.
User-generated content
The site accumulates results from user-generated content and it already boasts over 2,400 questions – ranging from ‘What shall I eat for dinner tonight?’ to ‘How do I break up with my partner?’. It is reported that the site has over 50,000 possible outcomes.
According to the site’s owners, Hunch is designed to offer more effective answers as its number of registered users increases. Bobbie Johnson, a technology writer for the
Guardian, said the site has a number of interesting implications.
“If it becomes popular, the result should be something like Last.fm, but for anything – a clever mathematical matchmaker that provides a postmodern update of Amazon's 'people who bought this item also looked at this' recommendation system," he says.
"As with all sites reliant on users to create the material, long-term success or failure will depend on how many people start using Hunch. However, given that the financial climate is reminiscent of concrete – tough, grey and utterly depressing – helping confused consumers make decisions could be a useful selling point."
