4 ms·

What about click-through rate? I'm pretty sure Facebook uses this in determining what to show on your newsfeed, and it's a percentage, so it's not based on quan

by dkasper 16y ago

What about click-through rate? I'm pretty sure Facebook uses this in determining what to show on your newsfeed, and it's a percentage, so it's not based on quantity.

rorymarinich 16y ago
Click-through rate might be slightly more accurate than simply pushing everything, but it's not an ultimate solution because it too makes assumptions about your usage. The one assumes you want everything equally; the other assumes that your desires can be perfectly correlated to your clickthroughs. But that's not true for anybody; what's worse, the reason why it's false is different for everybody. (What if the people who interact with me are more active than the people I actively seek out, and Facebook misinterprets my responses as active interest? What if I'm simply innocently stalking a girl obsessively but actually find her updates bland and individually unworthwhile? One must think of the stalkers, especially if one is hoping to make money on the Internet.) The real issue is that cases like those of anthuswilliams above you are unique and difficult to replicate. That's one of the noted problems with music recommendation services like Pandora too: What matters isn't what users tend towards but why, and why is a question that can't be effectively computed. It's more freeform. I think the real solution would be a site that actively helps a user be responsible for himself. Something that doesn't simply indicate what features are available, but why users might want to use them to sort out their friends. Contrary to what the OP says in his blog post, that is possible today, but it requires responsibility on both the parts of the reader (who must sort his inputs neatly) and the publisher (who must figure out where to publish what). And web sites presently don't feel it's worth their time to help you with that task.

by dkasper 16y ago

What about click-through rate? I'm pretty sure Facebook uses this in determining what to show on your newsfeed, and it's a percentage, so it's not based on quantity.

rorymarinich 16y ago

Click-through rate might be slightly more accurate than simply pushing everything, but it's not an ultimate solution because it too makes assumptions about your usage. The one assumes you want everything equally; the other assumes that your desires can be perfectly correlated to your clickthroughs. But that's not true for anybody; what's worse, the reason why it's false is different for everybody. (What if the people who interact with me are more active than the people I actively seek out, and Facebook misinterprets my responses as active interest? What if I'm simply innocently stalking a girl obsessively but actually find her updates bland and individually unworthwhile? One must think of the stalkers, especially if one is hoping to make money on the Internet.) The real issue is that cases like those of anthuswilliams above you are unique and difficult to replicate. That's one of the noted problems with music recommendation services like Pandora too: What matters isn't what users tend towards but why, and why is a question that can't be effectively computed. It's more freeform. I think the real solution would be a site that actively helps a user be responsible for himself. Something that doesn't simply indicate what features are available, but why users might want to use them to sort out their friends. Contrary to what the OP says in his blog post, that is possible today, but it requires responsibility on both the parts of the reader (who must sort his inputs neatly) and the publisher (who must figure out where to publish what). And web sites presently don't feel it's worth their time to help you with that task.