by Brian Carl on June 15, 2009
Flickr: poportis
So a brand new answer engine launched called Hunch. What is an answer engine?
Instead of ranking links based on how many people link to you the answers you get are based on the community. When you first get to the site you are going to be asked a bunch of questions. Apparently the engine takes all of you answers in account.
I am not sure how these starting questions effect your results, but once you answer 20 questions you an save your profile. At this point you can tell by the answers that the only people really using this are techy dudes.
Here are some of the results I got that solidify that fact.
- 46% of people have a blog that they update reguraly.
- 49% live in a major city
- 72% Male
- 68% are more likely to spoon than to be spooned. (Yeah that means that 4% of men who use Hunch prefer to be spooned.)
- 64% are 18-35
- 70% claim that when they buy a home theater system they will put it together without the manual. (I say claim, because I just bought a home theater system and used the manual to put it together, but I clicked that I wouldn’t.)
After you go through all those questions, you ask your own question. As of right now there is only a small amount of questions that can be answered, but I am sure in the next few days that will grow a lot. Then after that you have to answer even more questions.
Overall, it is a lot of work to get a question answered, but it is a pretty cool idea. Also as a side note, you can not answer questions after you ask your question by clicking “Give me the Hunch” although I think this begins to defeat the purpose. It is kind of like “I’m feeling lucky” on Google.
Has anyone else used Hunch yet? Let me know what you think.
Bonus: best question I found on Hunch
by Brian Carl on June 13, 2009
With Facebook allowing user names last night (I stayed up and grabbed up facebook.com/briancarl FTW) a lot of the talk has been why didn’t Facebook do this sooner when Myspace and every other social network has been doing it for quite some time. This is true, but Facebook pwns Myspace in so many ways. There is a lot I can write here but two biggest ways are:
- Facebook Pages. Facebook does a great job in separating people from the 3 annoying B’s of the social media, businesses, bands, and brands. The pages look very similar from your user profiles, but with a few key differences. Facebook pages can’t send you friend requests or solicit to you in any way on Facebook except through a paid advertisement. So you have to actually choose to become a fan and not have your inbox spammed.
- Streamlined look on all pages. Myspace lets you customize your page in anyway you want. This sounds like a great idea and it was when it first started, but then it got out of control. There are millions of sites on the web that give codes for people who don’t know how to use code. Now anyone can have an annoying profile that they probably don’t know how to undo.
If having your inbox was enough spam, most pages spam your eyes and ears as well. I don’t want to hear the music on your page while I wait 10 minutes for everything on your page to load. Do not even get me started on pages that have multiple songs and videos all autoplaying. On more than one occasion my computer has been crashed by a poorly designed pages.
There are many other reasons Facebook is growing at such a rapid rate and myspace isn’t. Feel free to leave your comments on how you feel. Is there something else major that should be on this list?
by Brian Carl on June 11, 2009
Xbox 360 anounced at E3 that they were going to add social media to their xbox live experience. They are adding a Facebook app, a Twitter app, and Last.FM.
Every business and their mother is all about the tweeting these days, which personally don’t really care about. The best thing about Twitter is how easy it is to ignore people, which is a major plus since it has been getting so spammy these days (Thats a whole nother post for another day). I am just hoping that it is a program like you use on your phone or TweetDeck and not a program that can autopost whenever your status changes.
There is a Facebook app already that tells people what you are doing on xbox and don’t like having to ignore my friends posts for flooding my news feed. The only time I canre what you are doing on XBOX Live, is when I am on xbox live, which I can already do or if they are playing UNO, but thats just because thats a good game.
The one cool thing that I read though is that through the new Facebook app you can take a screenshot of a game and post it to your facebook page. That’s a cool idea. So now when I get a triple bogey in Tiger Woods I can let everyone know.
The last program they announces was LastFM. I am sure I could have a comment for this one, but I don’t. It is always nice to have addition places to play music. Just like everyother anouncment these are all just new places to do things that we have already been doing.
I don’t even like typing out a quick message to someone on xbox live. Hopefully they will announce why this is different than using my computer or even my phone, both of those have full Keyboards.
by Brian Carl on June 10, 2009
Facebook recently announced that they were going to allow usernames so people can actaully find their family and friends and make it easier to link to them.
Starting on Saturday, June 13th, at 12:01am, you’ll be able to choose a username for your Facebook account to easily direct friends, family, and coworkers to your profile.
Starting this Saturday, really Friday night, you are going to be able to choose your own username to be the display url for your website, kinda like Myspace did and LinkedIn kinda did quite some time ago.
Is anyone else going to be staying in on Friday night to make sure to secure their name like I am? (I say staying in, but i really mean staying up) It is times like this having a common name sucks, but atleast my last name isn’t miller like most of my family.
I feel like I should have a party and invite everyone to bring over their laptops and choose their usernames. We could countdown like it’s New Years Eve and listen to “Will2K” by Will Smith. This party could be nerdier than when I went to BotCon.
I am an online marketer in Hartford, CT. 
