I don't think recommendations (from web elements or from friends) are ever a simple cause/effect relationship for me. I think it works like this: I treat recom

I don't think recommendations (from web elements or from friends) are ever a simple cause/effect relationship for me. I think it works like this: I treat recommendations like tally marks, once a show gets enough high quality tallies, I check it out. Maybe if I have conflicting information, I try to research more. If it's a novel recommendation engine, I might discount the value of its recommendations a lot, until it's proven to be really good. Same thing for friends. Those who share my taste or at least know my tastes really well, I calibrate up, based on the source. Regardless of the quality of the source, I usually need a few independent sources before I check something out. So a "similar to" from a good recommendation engine might tip the scales, or cause me to ask around, probably won't make me buy on its own. And if it's giving untrustworthy results, it gets discounted pretty fast.