Two new start-ups have recently joined the already saturated social network market. First you have Flickr co-founder’s new venture Hunch.com which is a decision-making site akin to Yahoo Answers and the other one is the social reviews/opinions site Lunch.com. Both social sites offer something new and take the already familiar social networking route with a different minor twist. But both draw on crowd-sourcing and user participation for their activities, hence both are worthy of being categorized as social network/media/tool.
Will You Trust Hunch with Your Decision-Making Task?
Hunch.com banks on the fact that decision making is a difficult process and all of us have to make decision constantly. By using 10 questions or less, Hunch aims to help you arrive at decision about practically anything. Hunch answers your question based on the inputs of the whole Hunch community. So you are assured that not only one person or an automated algorithm is answering you.
To better explain how it works, here’s how Hunch put it:
Hunch is designed to soak up collective knowledge and then organize it in a useful way to help you make smart decisions. Hunch proposes custom decision results for you that it wouldn’t necessarily give to somebody else. But at its core, Hunch’s decision making algorithm is just a mathematical framework. It’s the users of Hunch who give the algorithm proper training and personality by contributing to it and making it clever, funny, and nuanced…. but most of all very useful in helping everyone to make smart, efficient decisions.
But does Hunch really influence you to make a decision?
I’ve been “playing” with some Hunch topics and I would have to say that although some of the 10 questions are pretty much related to what decision you are trying to arrive at. But there are some inconsistencies or irrelevant as well. This is understandable since Hunch is still in beta mode, and users are still limited. Once it goes public, and user information are added and analyzed by Hunch, that’s time when we would know whether Hunch’s dictum of helping you arrive at a decision would actually work or not.
The other start up which we mentioned is Lunch.com, a social sharing network which is fuelled by user curiosity. Lunch.com lets you contribute facts and opinions about almost everything. The site then connects you to people who share common interests and helps you discover new things or products that you may want to purchase after knowing that somebody else has shared a good review or opinion about it.
Of these two start-ups, Hunch seems to be the one who’s got the potential to make waves once it goes public. Lunch.com’s offering is already being offered by other sites. Lunch.com might have a hard time taking off since it needs to spark user interest in as much as it can.