TechCrunch Hackathon – Whodata?

*Update* We won Hunch’s award for “Best Data Integration”!

I joined the Tech Crunch Hackathon with fellow Designer Kate Proulx as part of the Design Trust. We were there to act as a service bureau for the groups of developers who might not have the time or skills to focus on the artwork, UI / UX and logos for their ideas. After hearing several pitches for “Rapture Apps” and something that would help telemarketers call more people we decided to seek out a group we wanted to work with rather than having them come to us.

It didn’t take long to find the boys at Mashery. We were immediately taken in by Neil Mansillas idea to create a “Google Killer”. Let me clarify that statement a little bit. When you want to find out more about a new email contact or friend what do you do? Google them, of course. But we all know that this can be hit or miss and provide a lot of irrelevant information. Our goal was to create a simple web interface that would not only give you a basic biography but would also provide you with what this person likes. I don’t just mean what they ‘like’ on facebook. We give you, with one click of a button, specific subjects and products that this person is very likely interested in a variety of areas such as Movies, Fashion, Books, Health and Beauty.

The first part of this is easy. By scrapping data from several APIs such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn we could give you a pretty basic portrait of who this person is. The real magic came from harnessing Hunch’s powerful API and recommendation engine.

Just with a Twitter name or email address you could pull down not just basic facts about a person but a comprehensive picture of who this person is. To pull a quote from High Fidelty: “…what really matters is what you like, not what you are like… Books, records, films — these things matter.“