What should I eat for lunch? I'll ask Hunch

Flickr Co-Founder launches Hunch, a decision-making search engine

What should I eat for lunch - is a thought I ponder upon early in the morning when I hop on Bart, until the moment when I succumb to the $5 dollar Foot Long at Subway, starving and out of ideas.  Hunch, a new online decision making tool, helps you answer questions in all sorts of categories, like where you should work, what jeans you should buy, and what you should eat for lunch.

Hunch's private beta opened a few days ago, and I got a chance to check out what Flickr Co-Founder, Caterina Fake, has been working on.  

Hunch is built upon the theme that decision making is difficult, and wants to help all of us out.  As a user completes more and more topics, the site becomes customized for that user.  Hunch makes recommendations on which questions you may be pondering, or features new topics daily.  

Users create a profile on Hunch, which displays that individual's credibility and a little bit about them.  As you can see below, I've been through 11 topics, and my Water Cup shows I'm an optimist because most of my feedback is positive in regards to the results I've been given.  There's also a point system consisting of all sorts of badges which make you a more credible user, probably serving the purpose to try and get users to earn more.

The Hunch engine improves as more and more people use it.  By clicking the "yes" or "no" buttons when given a result, Hunch learns your preferences and uses those to help people with theirs.  Hunch encourages users to suggest new topics, create questions and results, and keep the site clean and intelligent.

Earlier this month, I posted an entry on Hunch receiving $2 million in funding.  Well, now we have some more answers about Hunch as a business.  Caterina Fake explains that Hunch plans to sell referral fees to external sites for the subset of topics that have to do with products and services.  In her blog, she admits, "we do have some affiliate links to Amazon and others. We're not marketing things to people that they don't want, or hoarding and selling people's data, and of course the presence of a link has no effect on Hunch decision results."

If you're interested in joining Hunch's preview before it launches into public beta mode, you can request an invitation here.  If you desperatly need to make some decisions and require a Hunch pass NOW, I have a few invites to give out, so feel free to contact me through Vator. 

Well, it's about lunchtime - so I guess I'll be hitting up the Taco truck down the street and diving into some Mexican food.  Thanks, Hunch.