eBay purchases Hunch, one of a number of social search startups seeking an exit after failing to gain a lot of traction in the mainstream search market. Hunch, Aardvark, Kosmix and Wowd all played there.
eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) has acquired
Hunch, the social
recommendation engine that failed to break free into the mainstream after it
launched in 2009.
The online auction giant did not reveal financial terms in
its purchase of Hunch, though Michael Arrington,
who
broke the news Nov. 21, claimed the startup fetched around $80 million.
Hunch delivers customized
recommendations to users based on their preferences. The service uses signals
from social networks and other facets of the Web to ascertain users' affinity
for brands, products, services, people and
Websites.
The company was part of a burgeoning bumper crop of social
search engines that included Aardvark, which
Google acquired and shuttered; Kosmix, which
Wal-Mart acquired last April; and
Wowd, which was sold and broken up. Social search utilities, it seems, are destined to be key ingredients within larger commerce engines.
eBay will turn Hunch's taste graph toward consumers for
product recommendations on the auction site, which seeks to expand its shopping
experience for consumers from traditional single item recommendations to
suggest new products to browse and purchase.
eBay CTO Mark Carges said eBay craved Hunch's expertise in machine
learning, data mining and predictive modeling, which will also be leveraged for
search, advertising and marketing ventures to "better surface product and
search results based on customers' tastes."
"We are engaging consumers in innovative ways and
attracting top technologists to shape the future of commerce," Carges said
in a statement. "We expect Hunch's technologies to benefit eBay shoppers
as they browse and buy, and to bring sellers on eBay new ways to connect the
right products with the right customers."
What eBay won't say is that it picked up Hunch to better compete with Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), whose recommendation engine and search capabilities
have helped make Amazon the top e-commerce company in the world.
Hunch will be a component of eBay's X.commerce platform for third-party Websites to use as their e-commerce platform. Social search utilities, it seems, are destined to be key ingredients within larger commerce engines.
Hunch co-founder Chris Dixon said on the
Hunch blog that he and his team will remain
in New York City, working on predictive merchandizing, interpreting
unstructured data and creating merchant insights at eBay:
"We were struck by the incredible opportunity to put
Hunch's Taste Graph technology to work for one of the undisputed global leaders
in e-commerce," Dixon wrote."We were equally impressed with the
caliber of the people we met at eBay. They share not only our passions for
creativity, innovation, and technology, but also our commitments to privacy, user
respect and data transparency."
Hunch.com will continue to operate as a stand-alone site,
Dixon promised.
What makes eBay's purchase of Hunch particularly
interesting is that it's been down this road of acquiring a social search and
discovery engine.
The company acquired StumbleUpon in 2007 but ultimately sold off the company
when then eBay CEO Meg Whitman couldn't figure out what to do with it.
Email
Print
