eBay buys Hunch to improve long-tail shopping recommendations

In an effort to improve its recommendation algorithms and close more sales at the end of the long-tail, eBay has announced its acquisition of startup Hunch (http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/21/ebayshunch/).

Hunch's site (www.hunch.com) describes it as a social media-enhanced recommendations engine. Users answers basic questions and link their Facebook and Twitter accounts to Hunch. It learns what you like and makes recommendations based upon your friends, who you follow, your question answers, etc. If you haven't tried it out, you can sign up and get started using the service in about 2 minutes.

Hunch seems to be following a common pattern and trend towards more social media-influenced and curated content that helps users better digest information and receive recommendations for books, movies, shopping, etc. using what they call a "taste graph."

As the company began to explore the value of its technology for other companies they met up with eBay and, it appears, found a good synergy with the auction site. The rumor is that Hunch was acquired for $80M and turned down and offer from Google last year for $60M.