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To Bing or to hunch?

I started looking at BING, the new search/decision engine a couple of weeks ago when I stumbled onto hunch, another search engine that promises to provide decisions.

I have become intrigued by hunch - here is a search engine that asks me questions. hunch promises the information will be kept private and be used to provide better decisions for me. It asked me basic questions - "Where do I live" - and interesting questions - "Do you like the smell of Play-doh" and "What is your favorite style of furniture?" while showing me images. After each response, you find out how your responses compare to others in the hunch environment. 

I have learned that 7% of us do not eat meat, 30% of us avoid video games and a whopping 70% of us don't have anyone in our households under the age of 18. (Since hunch is fairly new to the cyberscene, I question how broad the demographics are.) 

It took a few tries to get the knack of asking a decision-oriented question. When I ask for information, hunch converts the question to one that asks for a decision: "Is ShamWow a microfiber cloth?" was rephrased to "What is the best car care product for me?"  

The decision was "Zwipes, an inexpensive microfiber cloth sold at auto supply stores." The auto industry has been into the microfiber cloths for some time because they are so absorbent. I don't have the answer to my question about ShamWow, but I have a decision about which ones to get and where I can find them.

Now that I was getting the hang of this, I wondered if hunch could have helped me with a decision I made earlier this year. In January, I purchased an I-Phone and despite the massive amount of research I did, I have had a great deal of trouble with it. The Apple folks have bent over backwards to resolve all the issues but they can't keep up with them. Could hunch have helped me avoid these problems? 

I typed "Should I get an I-Phone" into the decision requesting window. hunch began asking me a series of questions and based on my answers, said I should get the Google Android. I wanted the Google Android! But I didn't want to wait until May for it to come out.

Next, I tried BING. "Should I get an I-Phone" and it responded with a couple of blogs that posed the question to visitors and a couple of news articles examining the question. But BING did not give me a decision the way hunch did.

hunch is riding along next to Microsoft's 80 million dollar advertising campaign for BING and is the brain child of Caterina Fake, the co-founder of Flickr. I like a lot of things about it but hunch is plagued by not enough information. Caterina Fake admits that with only 2500 silos of information, hunch has a long way to go. 

If you try BING out, you can readily see that it is far more developed than hunch but it seems hunch may hold more potential for the future as a decision engine.

Posted by Suzanne Dameron

Director, Emerging Communications

82 Degrees

82 Degrees, the professional organization for technology gurus and geeks, hosted a seminar Monday afternoon - Growing Your Business with Web 2.0. Bob Leonard of Bolen Communications created and MC'd the event. Here are some of the questions that surfaced throughout the afternoon from the audience:

Q1. With social media, how do you determine the right mix of audio...visual...?

A1: There is no rule of thumb for the right mix. Consider the target audience and the product or service you are selling. Consumers are looking for a voice, a trusted voice. That should guide you.

Q2. How often should you change your meta tags, keywords, etc.?

A2: Review them every 30 days.

Q3. Are we moving away from meta tags?

A3: Meta descriptions is a growing influential in analytics as it provides richer content.

Q4. What does paid search do?

A4: It improves your rankings on key words. However, organic content pulls in visitors in a more cost-effective way.

Q5. What makes a video viral?

A5: Oddly, it's not the fact that a video is passed around through thousands of viewers - it's the fact that it "can" be sent around. (from Presenter Robin Miller of Internet Video Promotions, Inc.)

Q6. What's a tip for start-ups?

A6: Give away tools that create community. (from Presenter Ian Alexander of Eat Media)

Q7. How can we effectively use analytics?

A7: An interesting observation from presenter Anand Pallegar of AtLarge, Inc was that we tend to use analytics for support rather than illumination. He encourages using analytics and then reviewing them in the context of their environment to better interpret their meaning.

Q8. What's the best way to get to the top of the Google pages?

A8: Rich content, better content, developing a trusted voice amidst the plethora of information.

Suzanne Dameron

Director, Emerging Communications