This is the promise of Hunch – the new… search engine? Service? What is it? – online for only a few days and set up by the people who started Flickr. So, how does it work? It promises to be able to respond to a variety needs based on the collected profiles and preferences expressed by community members. You begin with a profiling questionnaire of 20 questions – ranging from which paintings you prefer to your favourite chips – so the engine can ‘understand’ something about you. Then, on the bass of your questions and the answers provided, the engine compares your profile to that of other community members, with the promise of giving increasingly precise answers as its knowledge about you and the community grows. Is this a step towards the semantic web? Who knows; it’s too early to say. It’s even too early to say whether Hunch will be successful. This is what they say on their ‘About’ page: ‘Hunch is designed so that every time it’s used, it learns something new… Hunch’s answers are based on the collective knowledge of the entire Hunch community, narrowed down to people like you, or just enough like you that you might be mistaken for each other in a dark room…’ Fair enough… Web 2.0, the semantic web, marketing, behavioural advertising.