I've spent a bit of time today learning as much as I can about Hunch, the new social media application from the co-founder of Flickr, Caterina Fake. (My official invite is en route.)
Hunch is a decision-tree-meets-Wikipedia. It enables you to search expert advice to help arrive at a decision (beyond a hunch, if you will). What new computer should I get? Do I need to move? All told it will ask you a pile of questions and then give you a considered answer.
I'm going to call it a new form of journalism, because it involves interrogation and research (the data it collects could very well have further applications in that realm).
Fake's blog suggests the business model will involve products and services creeping into the adjacent space when certain topics are explored. For the time being, it's clear that monetization is less important than experience.
At the moment there are 500 topics, but the framework of the site will permit users to widen that (a la Wikipedia) and find new uses for the intelligent agents that lurk inside the software.
I'll be interested to try it.
