Rhyme and reason: reviewing Lunch.com & Hunch.com

This week in a brand new segment called "Rad on the Web" on DL.TV, I profiled two sites that are both based on community contribution;Lunch.com, a peer-to-peer review site and Hunch.com, a site that helps users make better decisions.

Lunch.com is in private beta and is a wiki site that aims to inform and empower users via reviews. Different nouns [people, places, things] are called "data points," all which can be created, reviewed and rated by users. Lunch's boorkmarklet, called LunchThis, can be downloaded and used to create data points on retail sites like Amazon and video giant, YouTube. Searching for preexisting data points is another way to use Lunch, but since it is so new, there is not a huge variety of built out wikis. By playing exhileRATE, a game on the site, Lunchers can bulk rate a number of things in one category [i.e. favorite wines or Girl Scout cookies]. Lunch is also a social network where you can follow and add friends who are looking for similar things that you are, or are in you Similarity Network. I am not sure what the distinction is between befriending and following, there seems to be some redundancy. To follow means to get updated of another members activity, but wouldn't most users want updates on their friends?

Hunch.com is another community-driven site with a rhyming name but different goal: to help people make better decisions. The site design of Hunch is nice and simple to navigate. The search bar is on the top right side and is where "What romantic movie should I watch?" or any query would be asked. A series of questions are asked which determine your top answers, like "What rating would you like?" and "What time period should the romance be set?".

The top 4 are usually displayed with descriptions, in this case the plot, as are the pros and cons of each result written by fellow Hunch users. What I've noticed is that the top results are usually good, but sometimes items in the extended list are much better. For example, Big was suggested as #4 on my romantic movie list, where I would much rather see The Notebook which was #20. Hunch works on an algorithm created by the geniuses at MIT, but isn't foolproof. Like every site under the sun, Hunch also has a networking aspect and option to add friends, as well a merit system where "banjos" [yes, like the instrument] are given for logging in and interacting as are badges symbolizing your additions to the community [i.e. teacher, philosopher, scientist, etc.]

Both are sites that could be successful if the communities they build are strong and active. I think that Lunch.com may have some stiffer competition as there are many sites that provide similar functions in a more simple manner [i.e. Yelp.com, Amazon.com, ePinions.com]. Hunch.com is a fun site to spend some time on and it does help make some decisions easier [e.g. "What city should I visit in China?"] Hunch reminds me a little of Mahalo.com, but is different primarily since the UI is worlds apart. If you were not one of the first 120 to request a beta code by emailing us at Dl.tv, try and sending them an email or tweet [follow Lunch or Hunch]and they should get back to you.

Comments

[Unknown]

Lunch doesnt seem to as some novel concept, there are many like that already. Hunch sounds good. Thanks for the valuable info.