Entries Tagged 'Events' ↓

We're always on the lookout for upcoming Web tech events from around world. Know of something taking place that should appear here? Want to get your event included in the calendar? Let us know in the comments below or email us.

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We're always on the lookout for upcoming Web tech events from around world. Know of something taking place that should appear here? Want to get your event included in the calendar? Let us know in the comments below or email us.

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We're always on the lookout for upcoming Web tech events from around world. Know of something taking place that should appear here? Want to get your event included in the calendar? Let us know in the comments below or email us.

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We're always on the lookout for upcoming Web tech events from around world. Know of something taking place that should appear here? Want to get your event included in the calendar? Let us know in the comments below or email us.

Sponsor

During the 2008 Presidential campaign, John McCain accused Barack Obama of being "the guy who worries about the price of arugula," a suggestion that Obama was an elitist. Many scoffed at the remark, but according to Hunch CEO and co-founder Chris Dixon, liberals do prefer arugula while conservatives opt for iceberg lettuce. The connection between lettuce preferences and political orientation is something that Hunch has uncovered through its taste graph and recommendation engine, something that Dixon describes as "the most sophisticated system ever built for predicting human preferences."

On stage today at ReadWriteWeb's 2WAY Summit, Dixon sat down with our own Marshall Kirkpatrick to talk about how Hunch has built its taste graph and how this sort of recommendation engine may shape the future of a more personalized Web.

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How Hunch Knows What You Like

By asking just a few simple questions to users, the Hunch website is able to predict with pretty astonishing accuracy how they'll answer other questions. After you "tell Hunch about yourself," the startup's recommendation engine is able to offer suggestions about other things you might like. Kirkpatrick pointed to a recent infographic on Dixon's own blog, detailing the amount of data that the startup is working with: about 500 million people, 200 million items and 30 billion edges. That last figure is key, as it means that Hunch has what Dixon calls a "known preference" for 30 billion items.

Dixon explained a little bit of the technology behind Hunch and behind other recommendation engines. He noted that unlike some systems that rely on natural language processing - on what people say, for example - Hunch is able to glean quite a lot based on who you follow on Twitter and what you like on Facebook. So if you follow Barack Obama, you're more likely to be a liberal. And you're more likely to prefer arugula.

Dixon said that initially Hunch had thought about building its own dataset, but instead has tapped into what's already on the Web, utilizing Facebook and Twitter authorization for example in order to identify some of these tastes.

Hunch Knows What You Like: Privacy Concern?

In light of concerns about Google and Facebook building facial recognition technology, Kirkpatrick asked how (or if ) we can protect people's privacy when it comes to "taste recognition." What are the implications of being able to tell so much about a person - their sexual orientation, their political orientation - just by their answering a few questions or linking their Twitter or Facebook accounts.

Dixon made it clear that despite Hunch's ability to predict users' tastes that the company would never sell that data. "We have never made a data deal," said Dixon. Furthermore, people can only get predictive information about themselves.

What Dixon envisions for Hunch nonetheless is to be "the place you keep your taste profile." That's something that's made a lot easier, in no small part, thanks to the Hunch API. Dixon talked about the possibilities of incorporating the Hunch taste graph into various applications, from better follow suggestions on Twitter to better hotel suggestions on a site like Kayak.

Dixon says that he believes that there seem to be two ways in which personalization will occur in the future - "either through shadowy cookies and things behind the scene" or by things that users control. And we want to be the people doing it."

Social media is supposed to empower users, giving them a platform to communicate more broadly. But as The Onion's Baraunde Thurston points out, social media also provides an opportunity for some great humor and pranking.

From live hate-tweeting the premier of the Twilight movies to creating rallies in support of Foursquare mayorships, Thurston addresses some of the "case studies of ridiculousness" that plague - or bless - us online.

Thurston is speaking today at ReadWriteWeb's 2Way Summit on "Creative Exploitation of Social Media from the Swine Flu to The Onion."

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We're livestreaming his talk. If you miss it, we'll have videos online later today.

Find an article you want to read while you're browsing the Web on your laptop and Instapaper it so you can read it later on your iPad. Notice a video that a friend shares via Facebook and flag it to watch later on your home TV via Boxee. Hear a band you like on YouTube and look for it on Rdio or visa versa.

Increasingly we are finding ourselves consuming more and more content from different online sources and consuming that content in different ways - on laptops, on mobile phones, and on Internet TV, for example. How does this change our needs and our desires - for both the content and the technology that supports it?

Earlier this year, investor Fred Wilson observed this phenomenon that he called "content shifting," the desire and (sometimes) the ability to shift content across a variety of Internet platforms to a variety of connected devices.

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Today at ReadWriteWeb's 2Way Summit in New York City, Wilson gave a keynote on content shifting and how this is changing the way in which we consume media.

Wilson believes that content shifting will provide major opportunities for investors and entrepreneurs as it's currently "still too hard to do this kind of thing."

Wilson pointed to four things he think will be important to consider: how we "microchunk" content, that we free it, syndicate it and monetize it.

You can find the slides from Wilson's talk here. We'll have video from the talk online later today.

We're always on the lookout for upcoming Web tech events from around world. Know of something taking place that should appear here? Want to get your event included in the calendar? Let us know in the comments below or email us.

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