The Art of Online Recommendations

Wired profiles Hunch, a company trying to master the art of online recommendations. Hunch participants respond to “Teach Hunch About You” questions, and their answers are fed into a master algorithm, which has already revealed some interesting correlations:?”people who swat flies have a thing for USA Today. People who believe in alien abductions are more likely than nonbelievers to drink Pepsi. People who eat fresh fruit every day are more likely to desire Canon’s pricey EOS 7D camera. And respondents who cut their sandwiches diagonally rather than vertically are more likely to prefer men’s Ray-Ban sunglasses.” There’s evidence the database has some teeth – its “Twitter Predictor” successfully predicted (85 percent of the time) “how anyone would respond to a series of questions using nothing more than a Twitter handle.” (HT: Brady Lyles) [%comments]