posted on November 22, 2011 07:51:23 PM new
EBay’s Plans for Hunch: Recommendations Galore
By JENNA WORTHAM
| November 21, 2011, 5:31 pm
Chris Dixon helped found Hunch in 2009.Chris Dixon helped found Hunch in 2009.
EBay has been adding new technologies to its arsenal lately in an effort to overhaul its retail identity and better compete with rivals like Amazon. Included in the company’s recent acquisitions are RedLaser, a bar-code scanning application; Milo, a price comparison tool; and GSI Commerce, a provider of online services that will help the company work with larger retailers.
On Monday, the company announced the latest step in its strategy: the acquisition of Hunch, an online recommendation start-up based in New York. Hunch creates a profile of what it thinks a person will like based on information about that person’s friends and activity from around the Web.
Mark Carges, the chief technology officer at eBay, said he hoped that Hunch would help eBay with one crucial blind spot in its shopping platform: suggesting items to buy or bid on.
“All retailers want to suggest items to the people visiting their site,” Mr. Carges said. “That works with a finite category of goods. We have a lot of unique inventory at eBay, from coins to auto parts.”
EBay currently has 200 million items for sale across 50,000 categories, and nearly 100 million registered buyers and sellers using the site. Put another way, that’s 9 petabytes of data. Hunch’s software could help eBay massage that data to improve the recommendations people see.
“If Hunch knows that people who like one fashion brand also usually like another brand, that kind of learning could be exported over to make suggestions on eBay,” said Chris Dixon, who co-founded Hunch with Caterina Fake in 2009.
In addition, Hunch could help eBay strengthen the social components of its site, since it can tap into what someone’s friends like and make recommendations based on that.
Hunch will keep its operations in New York and continue to experiment with developing recommendation software while it begins integrating some of its tools into eBay’s site.
Mr. Carges said eBay was not yet done building out technologies and buying start-ups. He said that establishing a presence in New York could help the company focus on two more of its objectives: polishing the site’s design and building the community of fashion buyers and sellers on the site.
“We’re going to continue to work with data and new technologies that can help us reinvent new commerce and retail,” he said.
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Gandhi's seven deadly social sins:
Politics without principle
Wealth without work
Commerce without morality
Pleasure without conscience
Education without character
Science without humanity
Worship without sacrifice
posted on November 24, 2011 06:25:22 AM new
We have all that waving in our face already,and now more!!!!!!!!!!!!!
As a seller ,I just dont see how it is going to help us,someone spotted another item similar to what we have for LESS so there will be more buyer remorse returns.
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posted on November 24, 2011 07:22:34 AM new
Sometimes lately I get a bit spooked when I really think about how much these corporations know about me!
Inevitable in this technology driven world but it doesn't mean I have to like it!
posted on November 24, 2011 12:56:49 PM new
Supermarkets do that already,by using their card,they track what you buy and offer up more of the same.
But do we need more?
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posted on November 24, 2011 01:17:40 PM new
hwa is right. Have you ever noticed that when you pay at the grocery store the computer will print up coupons for items you have purchased in the past or items that are similar to those.
posted on November 24, 2011 03:12:10 PM new
The problem with doing so on Ebay is that if these are used items and/or coming from individual sellers,they are not exactly the same,the condition could be different,the maker could be different like knockoffs and repros,and if they are from different sellers,there is no combined shipping discount.
Have you ever been to a fleamarket where you buy from one dealer and the venue provider said we have more over there,they could be knockoffs,fakes,repros,not working,dirty,smelly or the seller may never ship,but then you can always seek Ebay buyer protection!
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