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> for sites like Steam, YT, Netflix I always wish for more tuning parameters because their recommendations are all horrible. The problem with those recommendat
by unoti 9y ago
> for sites like Steam, YT, Netflix I always wish for more tuning parameters because their recommendations are all horrible.
The problem with those recommendation engines is that they're not optimized to serve your needs. They're optimized to serve the goals of their respective companies. And the problem comes when your needs are a little incompatible with the needs of the company.
Consider Netflix for example. Their recommendations don't seem to care much about what you actually enjoy the most. They pay different amounts of money to let you watch different content. So your goal of watching the thing you would enjoy the most is different from whatever the hell their goals are-- probably to get you to watch just enough Netflix to make you not want to cancel your subscription, but not run up their bills on bandwidth and licensing fees.
I'm absolutely confident Netflix could make amazing recommendations-- and probably already has them internally. But it's not in their best interest to give recommendations that are in your best interest.
To the extent that I'm right about this it could be a market opportunity to make an honest and useful recommendation service.
- theseatoms 9y ago> They're optimized to serve the goals of their respective companies. And the problem comes when your needs are a little incompatible with the needs of the company. Ultimate they are compatible though. And yes I mean in the econ 101 way. This tension should be at least partially resolved via pricing scheme innovation.
- eru 9y agoPricing scheme innovation, and just plain iterated interaction and long term reputation.
- sgustard 9y agoNetflix has a tiny catalog, so investing in making recommendations from that tiny catalog is mostly wasted. Half of Netflix's business now is House of Cards, so their entire algorithm consists of recommending House of Cards to people who haven't watched it yet, and random content to the others.
- chiefalchemist 9y agoIt's worth noting that satisfaction is also a function of perception. Did you enjoy the movie? Yeah, probably. But then you think about all the possibilities, a small number of which would naturally be better, and an acceptable film fades towards unacceptable. Regardless of how good the recommendation engine might be, it's still always subject to human perception. That can be unpredictable and fickle, on a good day :)
- watwut 9y agoSteam would earn more from me if I did not closed it frustrated every time I wanted to buy game. I literally did not bought game because there was no way to filter out stuff I don't like (well defined category in this case).