Gifts.com & Hunch Partner to Build the Ultimate Gift Recommendation Engine; New Feature Provides Personalized Recommendations for Facebook Friends

NEW YORK, Nov. 22, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- Gifts.com, the # 1 gift recommendation website and operating business of IAC (Nasdaq: IACI), and leading recommendation engine Hunch, have partnered to offer a unique and highly personalized gift shopping experience, based on the most reliable information of all – a recipient's own taste.

The partnership combines the unique strengths of each company - joining Gifts.com's hand-picked gift ideas with Hunch's personalization technology - to produce the most sophisticated gift recommendation engine available.

"Gifts.com is the ideal launch partner to showcase how Hunch's taste-driven algorithms can provide highly-relevant, customized recommendations," noted Shaival Shah, VP of Business Development for Hunch. "It's a great example of how strong recommendations can create deep consumer engagement and ultimately stronger conversion to purchase."

By leveraging Facebook profile data, Hunch instantly provides a gift shopper with personalized gift recommendations based on their friend's likes and interests. This data is enhanced by fun Q&A about the recipient to create their unique "taste profile." In addition to this technology, shoppers can also trust that every recommended gift has first been hand selected and categorized by Gifts.com's expert staff.  It is the perfect marriage of technology and human expertise.

"This is the ideal application of Hunch technology," said Graham Stanton, President, Gifts.com. "Personalization makes things easier than ever for the gift shopper, while simultaneously yielding a better gift for the recipient."

Hunch personalizes the internet by providing customized recommendations based on a proprietary "Taste Graph." Hunch's Taste Graph maps internet users with their affinity for anything -- from websites, restaurants, and hotels to fashion, interests and even other people.

Key features of the new service include:

• Instant gift recommendations for the shopper's Facebook friends based on their likes, interests and profile information.
• Dynamic updates to the list of gift recommendations as the shopper fine tunes the suggestions by answering "yes" or "no" to each gift.  
• The ability to increase the "confidence level" of Hunch's taste profile algorithm by answering conventional or more entertaining questions about the recipient like, "Alien Abductions: Does your recipient think they are real or fake?"

Early results are very promising. In just 10 days since launch, shoppers are answering an average of 40 questions per visit and conversion is as much as 60% higher than the average for the site, proof that the new feature is providing highly relevant recommendations.

To try the new gift finder, visit http://www.gifts.com/sff.

About Gifts

Gifts.com is the # 1 gift recommendation site, offering consumers hand-picked gift ideas and interactive, personalized shopping services that enable them to become better, more organized gift-givers. Gifts.com combines editorial sourcing with its proprietary personality-based gift finder to deliver the most relevant and unbiased gift options available, ranging from popular and trendy to unique and unexpected. For more information, visit http://www.gifts.com.

About Hunch

Hunch Inc. personalizes the internet by helping anyone find and discover the people, places, or things they might like. Powered by a growing 'Taste Graph' which combines machine learning algorithms with a passionate online community, Hunch's personalized recommendations are available on hunch.com and select partner sites.

About IAC

IAC operates more than 50 leading and diversified Internet businesses across 30 countries... our mission is to harness the power of interactivity to make daily life easier and more productive for people all over the world. To view a full list of the companies of IAC please visit our website at www.iac.com.

SOURCE IAC