Hunch, a New Decision Making Engine, Just Launched

Hunch, a new social tool designed to help people make decisions, has just been launched today, after being in private beta for a while. The startup, co-founded by Caterina Fake, one of Flickr's co-founders, uses special algorithms along with information it gathers from you to help you make any decision you can think of.

Hunch will answer your questions based on a decision tree created by others but also on the profile it made from your own answers. The decision trees come is a series of up to 10 questions and after you have answered them the site will give you the top 5 results. Here the social aspect kicks in as you can also read user reviews on the question and, like a wiki, and even edit the results yourself.

“In 10 questions or less, Hunch will offer you a great solution to your problem, concern or dilemma, on hundreds of topics. Hunch's answers are based on the collective knowledge of the entire Hunch community, narrowed down to people like you, or just enough like you that you might be mistaken for each other in a dark room. Hunch is designed so that every time it's used, it learns something new. That means Hunch's hunches are always getting better,” the site states.

The website is fun to use as answering the questions Hunch uses to create your profile or making your own questions for others can be quite entertaining. Already the site has more than 7 million questions, created by its more than 30,000 users. You can add your own questions via a system called the Workshop, which allows for newly created topics or questions to be reviewed by others before becoming available to all. The company plans to make a profit from the service from referrals and commission fees by giving links to purchase products that may be in the answers.