 Issue 9: May 18, 2011 |
 The Atlantic: Hunch's Ever-Expanding Taste Graph  Mac vs PC: The Stereotypes May be True  Hunch Brings Predictions to Internet TV |
This is issue #9 of Hunch News. Enjoy! An Enhanced Hunch Activity Feed You may have noticed by now that the activity feed on Hunch has a new look. The enhanced feed combines several longstanding Hunch features — an activity feed (which we've had since 2009), personalized recommendations, machine-based predictions and a follower system — into one comprehensive feed that also includes several new social features. The Hunch Feed helps you discover personal recommendations made by people you follow, and lets you share your own recommendations among people who follow you. The recommendation feed supports embedded video and audio, hi-res imagery, and a threaded commenting system. The recommendations you see in your feed will also draw upon Hunch's Taste Graph to show an algorithmic prediction for how much Hunch thinks you'll like them. It's sort of a 'blended smoothie' of social recommendations and algorithmic-based predictions. You can still continue to browse Hunch recommendations by topic, as well. But we hope the feed will make it even easier for you to discover great new recommendations that are personally-endorsed by other Hunch users. If you haven't already, take the new recommendation feed for a spin. Welcome to our Brand Partners You may have noticed some influential and interesting brands with their own Hunch recommendation feeds, including Spin Magazine, Threadless, Bergdorf Goodman, America's Test Kitchen, IGN, Food Network, Showtime, SoundCloud, StyleCaster, Smule, 8Tracks and Artsicle. We'll be announcing additional participating brands in the coming weeks and months. We've worked with these brands to create official pages on Hunch that designate their authenticity. You'll find that their recommendations are generally a fun mix of products, promotions, special events, causes, and compelling content. All this gives Hunch users the ability to follow the relevant recommendations of brands they know and trust. If you're an influential brand and are interested in tapping into Hunch's audience and Taste Graph to extend your social media outreach, we'd love to hear from you. Contact us at bd@hunch.com. The Ever-Expanding Taste Graph The Taste Graph is the foundation that powers Hunch's predictions. It is the growing, constantly-improving, massive data structure that fuels not only Hunch.com, but also partner site customization and our open API. The Taste Graph is also big. How big? Really big: it consists of 500 million people mapped to 200 million items, and a total of 30 billion connections ("edges" in tech-speak). It runs on a super computer and uses proprietary software, all for the purpose of helping you get the best possible recommendations that are tailored just for you. To understand a bit more about the taste graph, including how we produce it, what goes into it, and how it works, check out our Taste Graph Infographic. Infographic: Mac vs PC Our Mac vs PC Infographic was the most popular and widely-circulated report we've ever produced. CNN even did a "follow up story to the story", since their original coverage generated more than 5,300 comments from Mac and PC people basically screaming at each other. Forget politics and religion; maybe this is the new topic that good friends just shouldn't discuss when their opinions diverge. We have a number of fun reports and Infographics planned for the next few months. Check out our reports page to see all the ones we've produced so far. Misc. goodies
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