Today though, that veil comes off, and Hunch becomes open to all. It's gone through a lot of changes and gained a lot of new features since we first reviewed it. So what have Caterina and her team built? What has changed? And most of all, could it really transform how people consider and make decisions? To answer these questions, we took this little "decision engine" out for another spin.
Hunch: The Overview
If you missed our last review, here's the short version of it: Hunch is a tool that utilizes decision trees to help make a decision on virtually any topic. It can help you figure out what to eat for the night, which online dating website to try, or if you should move to another country by asking a series questions that drill down to a final set of answers.
On top of this, Hunch utilizes information that it knows about you to improve the relevancy of results. This is primarily done by answering a series of (nearly) endless questions in its Teach Hunch About You section. Not only does it help the algorithm, but it's actually quite enjoyable to use.
Once you get to an answer, you can view the top 5 results, read user reviews (pros and cons), and even edit the results or fix the hunch if you believe something's amiss, much like a wiki. Essentially, these are the core attributes of the Hunch decision system.
What's changed
Since Hunch's launch, it has had 30,000+ users create over 7 million questions in its system. The average user has created 120 questions, which is a huge testament to Hunch's stickiness and entertainment factor. Hunch has utilized all of this data to create some very interesting and useful community features.
The biggest addition to Hunch is the Workshop, a place where you create new questions and topics before they go live for all users. Hunch found that many questioned needed additional work and the input of others to get the answers right, and thus it launched a system where users can create questions and results. Before it appears on the site, users must vote it up in an interesting Digg-like system that promotes good content to the main website.
The other big change to hunch has been a huge increase in community features. Profiles are rich in content, allow you to follow users you like, and earn "banjos," which is the currency of Hunch. Yes, you earn banjos, of all things, for creating and answering questions. There's also a news feed so you can keep up with friends.
Hunch is the Real Decision Engine
When we last used Hunch, we were impressed by its accuracy and the breadth of content it covered. Now, we're simply astounded. I thought of practically every question I could really want to ask, and Hunch had a decision tree to help me resolve my doubts. In that regard, Hunch and its community really does help.
Hunch's most direct competitor is probably Let Simon Decide, which takes a more mathematical approach to decision-making (although Hunch does a lot of statistical analysis in the background). What separates Hunch from Let Simon Decide, though, is the entertainment and social factor. You're not leaving your decisions in the hands of just a computer, but have the input of thousands of people who've been in similar situations, which is actually quite comforting.