Flickr Founder Has a Hunch that Bing Will Help Her Start-Up

Wednesday, June 10th, 2009 by Andy Beal

Flickr Founder Has a Hunch that Bing Will Help Her Start-Up

What do smart companies do when they know they can’t compete with the #1 company in market? They create a new market!

After years of making claims of being the "next Google killer" it appears that today’s crop of start-ups are keen to distance themselves from the search engine giant–and any "search engine" tag–WolframAlpha and Bing are just two recent examples.

Now the LA Times reports that Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake’s new start-up Hunch.com, will take the exact same "unsearch" route–and piggyback off the millions being spent by Microsoft!

"We’re nothing like a search engine," Fake said in an interview from New York. "We’re more related to the answers sites."

"Bing is kind of doing us a big favor by popularizing the idea that people go online to make decisions. But I don’t think we’re competitive with them."

Hunch launches Monday and will require users to complete a personality test so it can then provide results that it has a "hunch" will be relevant to you.

So the next time you need a answer, you’ll have to decide if you want to search, compute, go on a hunch, or get a decision!

Social Media Monitoring in Just 60-Seconds. Guaranteed!

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3 comments on “Flickr Founder Has a Hunch that Bing Will Help Her Start-Up”

Internet User Tries To “Search,” Is Forced Into A “Decision” - mockaholic Says:

June 10th, 2009 at 10:49 am

[...] = ‘mockaholic’; The search engine wars are getting increasing irritating. Now, Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim blog is reporting that Flickr co-founder Catarina Fake is launching a new site on Monday that’s not a [...]
What’s Your Hunch on New Discovery Engine’s Chances of Success? - Web 2.0 Promotions Says:

June 18th, 2009 at 5:03 am

[...] week, we gave you a heads-up that Hunch would be launching today. Well, our…ahem…hunch was correct; Hunch.com is now [...]
Website copywriting Says:

July 9th, 2009 at 12:29 am

I agree with you–sometimes the way to fight a battle is not head on but on another level or front. With that said, Bing has some serious issues. I do SEO and it looks like Bing doesn’t have many protections against blackhat SEO that Google has. I am not sure how long it can sustain its search volume if the quality of the search experience is eroded by crap/spam listings.