I’m not good at vacationing. I’ve repeatedly failed at palapas and mai-tais. The word “thong” makes me nervous. And on a vacation to Boring-Boring I mean Bora Bora after snorkeling, waterskiing, visiting the marine preserve, getting stung by a jellyfish, eating at every restaurant and reading the seven books I’d brought, I spent all my time sneaking into the business center and wheeling around the island looking for a functioning cell tower. In any event I’m back from my first vacation in 4 years. I mean, I know I have a reputation for not relaxing, but I didn’t expect when I returned I’d be met with speculation that I’m leaving Hunch. Reporters calling me (Hi Mike!) asking if it’s true. But I’m a full time employee, and I just took a vacation. 
Hunch has pivoted. We’ve gone from being a consumer destination site based on user-created topics, to a taste-graph driven platform for partner sites. The things I’m good at are building communities, participatory media, places where people contribute things of their own making. So yes, I am wondering what I can do that best serves Hunch and utilizes my own particular talents. I will find the perfect role for me, and whatever it is, is TBD. I have no plans to parachute off the plane.
Hunch’s dataset has grown incredibly fast: we’ve mapped 30 billion “edges”, we’ve signed dozens of partnerships and 2011 will be the year that the internet gets personalized. Hunch will be at the center of it. I love Hunch, the awesome team, my brilliant cofounders — we’re doing great work and building a great company. Vacations are good, and I come back energized, with the whiff of Hawaiian Tropic in the air and 2,000 messages in my Inbox.
Caterina.net 
Caterina,
Fantastic that you went on vacation! Thong should make anyone suspect as it sounds like a word anesthetizing something nefarious. Did you not enjoy Bora Bora?
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Oh, and what did you read?
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When you don’t leave Hunch I’d love to talk to have a conversation with you about Mobspot…
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Caterina,
I agree completely with your assessment that “2011 will be the year that the internet gets personalized.” It’s inevitable (or at least HUGELY desirable) that clarity emerge from the chaos. I’d much rather have control over my own taste profile than let an imperfectly impersonal army of cyber bots try to interpret where my intellectual curiosity ends and my willingness to part with a finski begins.
Fred H.
BTW, Good luck with your next venture.
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Hi Caterina,
I read how your talents are best served in ” building communities, participatory media, places where people contribute things of their own making.” As such, we are building such a community at PennyGrabber and one of the components where you would find most fulfillment is in our “Social Commerce Graph” where we enable our Social Shoppers to actively and deliberately build out their Social Commerce Graph.
If this is something you’d like to know more about and possible join the team, please shoot me an email at your earliest convenience. Thanks.
– Kameko
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