This is a project motivated by Slickdeals.net. As you might know, Slickdeals.net forum is one of the most fantastic and real-time source of best online deals. Active users quickly post deals when they see a new one or thumbs up/down other SDer's deal thread. So we built an algorithm to figure out which are the best deals among SD's hot deals forum.
This algorithm is based on several factors including the deal rating based on thumbs up/down from SD users, the deal post time, the last post time, the thumbs up/down and number of replies in unit time. We used a complex weighting system from these above factors to deduct a score of each thread and update this score in real time. Then we set a threshould to only show you the deals which are above this certain threshold.
Using this algorism, after rigorous testing, we are able to present you the best deals online even faster than SD's own Frontpage and Popular deal sections. So if you are able to check our site frequently, you should be able to score the hottest deals.