Hunch was an American company founded in 2007 that offered product recommendation, through its proprietary website, based on users' interest. Hunch launched its website in June 2009. In November 2011, Hunch was acquired by

eBay eBay Inc. ( , often stylized as ebay) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that allows users to buy or view items via retail sales through online marketplaces and websites in 190 markets worldwide. ...

for

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80 million (equivalent to $ million in ). While the technology continues to be used in eBay's e-commerce platform, the public facing website for Hunch was shuttered in March 2014.

History

Hunch was co-founded in 2007 by

Caterina Fake Caterina Fake (born June 13, 1969) is an American entrepreneur and businesswoman. She co-founded the websites Flickr in 2004 and Hunch in 2007. Fake has been a trustee for nonprofit organizations and was the chairwoman of Etsy. For her role in ...

(co-founder of

Flickr Flickr ( ) is an image hosting service, image and Online video platform, video hosting service, as well as an online community, founded in Canada and headquartered in the United States. It was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and was previously a co ...

), and

Chris Dixon Chris Dixon (born ) is an American internet entrepreneur and investor. He is a general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He is also the co-founder and former CEO of Hunch. Dixon is known as a cryptocurrency and Web3 eva ...

, working with a small team of eight fellow "MIT nerds with backgrounds in computer science and math". The operation, headquartered in New York City, developed a website that offered product recommendations based on users' interest. Hunch started a private preview period in December 2008, with a

private beta The software release life cycle is the process of developing, testing, and distributing a software product (e.g., an operating system). It typically consists of several stages, such as pre-alpha, alpha, beta, and release candidate, before the fi ...

in March 2009. Hunch launched its website in June 2009. In December 2009,

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co-founder

Jimmy Wales Jimmy Donal Wales (born August 7, 1966), also known as Jimbo Wales, is an American List of Internet entrepreneurs, Internet entrepreneur and former Trader (finance), financial trader. He is a Founders of Wikipedia, co-founder of the non-profi ...

joined Hunch.com as a board member and advisor. In February 2010, the website had 1.2 million unique visitors. In January 2011, Hunch was redesigned from decision tree system and topic specific questions to tagging and product referral. In November 2011, Hunch was acquired by

Inc. for

80 million (equivalent to $ million in ). eBay planned to use Hunch's recommendation engine technology to improve how their own e-commerce platform offered users items to purchase. Specifically, eBay intended to use the Hunch technology to make non-obvious purchase suggestions. After its acquisition by eBay, co-founder

remained as head of the operating business within eBay. eBay merged the approximately 20 employees at Hunch with the approximately 50 employees on the existing eBay data science team, under Dixon's department. While the underlying recommendation engine technology remains in use at eBay, the public-facing website for the independent Hunch recommendation engine was closed in March 2014.

References

{{Reflist Online retailers of the United States Knowledge markets Social information processing Internet properties established in 2009 2009 establishments in the United States Recommender systems