Hunch

Tech execs: It's a good time to be a woman in tech (live blog)

What's it like to be a top manager or engineer in Silicon Valley and a woman? Google's Marissa Mayer, Flickr founder Catarina Fake, and Padmasree Warrior of Cisco Systems talked about that and more today at the CNET Women in Tech panel.

The three agreed that progress has been made, but that there's still a long way to go to get more women into the technology field.

Mayer said she believes we need to get more people interested in technology overall--men and women. Warrior said we need to find ways to keep women in the workforce and … Read more

eBay acts on Hunch to get recommendation engine

eBay has bought recommendation engine Hunch for an undisclosed sum, the companies announced today.

New York-based Hunch launched in 2009 as a place to find personalized recommendations on a range of topics, including video games, movies, and technology, based on a user's personal preferences. In order to make recommendations, Hunch asks a series of multiple-choice questions. Upon choosing an answer, the service learns a bit more about the user, and offers up some topics or products they might like based on that.

Although Hunch and eBay don't look like a perfect match at first glance, it appears that … Read more

Questioning Facebook's Q&A quest

Every so often a test Facebook feature pops up for some of the social network's 400 million users, and this week it was some sort of question-and-answer service. This generated more interest than a Facebook product prototype would have otherwise because a Q&A feature on Facebook would presumably compete with Quora, a new start-up founded by former Facebook employees--including CTO Adam D'Angelo, who left Facebook two years ago.

The "Facebook Questions" story was originally reported by AllFacebook's Nick O'Neill, who said a few readers had tipped him off to the presence of &… Read more

Hunch homes in on who you are

It took 39 questions for the Hunch Twitter Predictor to make a wrong guess about me. The question was, "Have you ever ridden a Segway?" Yes, in fact, I have.

"We call it a 'stunt' internally. It's a fun way to show off the accuracy of our data," Hunch co-founder Chris Dixon told CNET about the Twitter Predictor, a new tool that takes a look at your Twitter network in an attempt to figure out as much as it can about you.

Start-up Hunch launched the prediction tool earlier this month and racked up about … Read more

Hunch gets $10 million from Khosla Ventures, others

Hunch, a buzzy start-up that answers questions using crowdsourced recommendations, has resolved one query of its own: who's going to fund our B round?

Sources tell me that Khosla Ventures is leading a new round that will add another $10 million to $12 million to the start-up's bank account. General Catalyst Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Ron Conway, who put $2 million into the company a year ago, are reinvesting.

I'm told that Gideon Yu, the former chief financial officer of both Facebook and YouTube, is steering the investment for Khosla.

Hunch was co-founded by Caterina Fake, … Read more

Decision maker Hunch.com opens up

Crowd-sourced decision-making helper Hunch.com is out of private beta today. The site helps people make decisions based on how they answer questions from user-created quizzes (See our hands-on from April). Anyone can create these, however the strength of the site is that they can be linked to credible, outside sources to back up any advice or claims. There's also an algorithm that learns more about you as you use the site. The more it knows, the less of the quiz questions you have to answer to get valid recommendations.

Hunch says you only need to answer 10 sample … Read more

Hunch: The decision maker you were waiting for?

Hunch helps you make decisions. For quandaries ranging from "Where should I live?" to "Which blog should I read?" the system plays a question-and-answer game with you, to home in on an answer.

To improve your results, you can also teach the system about yourself by taking a quiz that asks questions like "Would you rather lead or be led?" and "Which 'Sesame Street' character appeals to you?" As you answer these questions, Hunch's algorithm is cataloging your answers and learning more about you.

I started using Hunch after taking the … Read more

Flickr co-founder presses beta button

Once you're lucky, twice you're good? So went the title of a recent book about Web 2.0 entrepreneurs. Pretty soon, we may have an idea whether it applies to Caterina Fake.

Fake, the co-founder of Flickr, announced on her blog Friday afternoon that her new start-up, Hunch, is sending out invitations to try the service, now in beta test.

What is it? I'll hand the reins over to Fake and let her explain:

Look. Decision-making is difficult, and decisions have to be made constantly. What should I be for Halloween? Do I need a Porsche? Does … Read more

Flickr co-founder joins NYC start-up Hunch

Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake, who left the Yahoo-acquired company in June, has a new gig. She posted on her blog on Wednesday that she'll be joining a stealthy New York-based start-up, Hunch, as "Chief Product Officer, board member, and resident Facebook app skeptic."

So what is Hunch? That's under the radar, but we're hearing from a well-placed source that it's a recommendation engine that uses "collective crowd intelligence." That doesn't sound too original, but our source hinted that the technology behind it is pretty top-notch. It's still under development, but … Read more