eBay Acquires Hunch
Ebay is buying recommendation engine “Hunch” for 80 mil.
Key things to note:
Increasingly, that research aims to surface less-popular items to showcase the breadth of eBay’s inventory. For the past year, eBay has been testing a tool called Discover that serves up unexpected results through a sophisticated algorithm. Hunch’s technology will augment that initiative by mining shoppers’ actions outside eBay, including their activity on social networks. Adding this data will enable eBay to “move beyond standard item-to-item recommendations” by suggesting products based on “a broader variety of members’ online tastes and interests”, the company said.
