The Interest Graph has been described as the “middle ground between Google and Facebook – between search, advertising, and the social graph”. Simply put, Google creates their version of the Interest Graph by mining my search queries and other data collected online, for example through Gmail or Google Maps. It then offers advertisers a way to personalize their messages. One of the problems is the often high noise level in the data due to the lack of context (e.g. I might be looking up something for a friend rather than myself), which decreases relevancy. Recently, there has been a lot of buzz around social search as studies have shown that friend recommendations are much more powerful than traditional advertising in influencing consumer behavior and purchasing decisions.
Neil Movold on 22 Nov 11EBay said it will use Hunch's "taste graph" technology to provide its users with non-obvious recommendations for items based on their unique tastes. The company said it will also apply Hunch's technology to other areas such as search, advertising and marketing, in order to better surface product information based on its customers' tastes.