3 ms·

How the Yahoo homepage predicts your clicks

47 points by mjfern 15y ago

noelwelsh 15y ago
If you want details on the tech. go read some of John Langford's publications (http://research.yahoo.com/John_Langford http://research.yahoo.com/John_Langford) and the rest of the Machine Learning group at Yahoo (http://research.yahoo.com/Machine_Learning http://research.yahoo.com/Machine_Learning). I sometimes joke that Myna (http://www.mynaweb.com http://www.mynaweb.com -- ob plug for my startup!) should be renamed the John Langford Appreciation Society.
jcfrei 15y ago
very interesting to see how steadily machine learning algorithms creep into our news feeds (eg. facebook) and deliver us with the the links we're most likely to click. but i fear that this will lead to a serious decline in editorial quality, leaving an endless stream of cute kittens and hair styling tips. who will tell us what's really going on if some algorithm decides what's newsworthy and what's not?
- seabee 15y ago
  That will happen if the role of editor is replaced rather than (as Yahoo is doing) augmented. I don't think you should fear a decline in editorial quality as much as you should fear the devaluation of news. If people want quality they must be willing to pay for it. If they don't want to, whose fault is that?
madars 15y ago
Yury Lifshits (then a research scientist at Yahoo! Research) did a talk at Estonian Summer School on Computer Science called "Intro to Content Optimization" [1], where he explained one of the approaches. It makes an interesting read. [1] -- http://yury.name/esscass/ http://yury.name/esscass/
rg 15y ago
*"The system knows that women generally favor stories about Brad Pitt, but after some real-time analysis, it can quickly realize that men are far more like to click on a Brad Pitt story that involves a sports movie."* This is like Michael Frayn's first comic novel "The Tin Men" (1965), about programming a computer to produce an "automated newspaper". "But people really preferred an air crash. ... What people enjoyed most was about 70 dead, with some 20 survivors including children rescued after at least one night in open boats. They liked it to be backed up with a story about a middle-aged housewife who had been booked to fly aboard the plane but who had changed her mind at the last moment."

47 points by mjfern 15y ago

If you want details on the tech. go read some of John Langford's publications (http://research.yahoo.com/John_Langford http://research.yahoo.com/John_Langford) and the rest of the Machine Learning group at Yahoo (http://research.yahoo.com/Machine_Learning http://research.yahoo.com/Machine_Learning). I sometimes joke that Myna (http://www.mynaweb.com http://www.mynaweb.com -- ob plug for my startup!) should be renamed the John Langford Appreciation Society.

jcfrei 15y ago

very interesting to see how steadily machine learning algorithms creep into our news feeds (eg. facebook) and deliver us with the the links we're most likely to click. but i fear that this will lead to a serious decline in editorial quality, leaving an endless stream of cute kittens and hair styling tips. who will tell us what's really going on if some algorithm decides what's newsworthy and what's not?

seabee 15y ago
That will happen if the role of editor is replaced rather than (as Yahoo is doing) augmented. I don't think you should fear a decline in editorial quality as much as you should fear the devaluation of news. If people want quality they must be willing to pay for it. If they don't want to, whose fault is that?

madars 15y ago

Yury Lifshits (then a research scientist at Yahoo! Research) did a talk at Estonian Summer School on Computer Science called "Intro to Content Optimization" [1], where he explained one of the approaches. It makes an interesting read. [1] -- http://yury.name/esscass/ http://yury.name/esscass/

rg 15y ago

*"The system knows that women generally favor stories about Brad Pitt, but after some real-time analysis, it can quickly realize that men are far more like to click on a Brad Pitt story that involves a sports movie."* This is like Michael Frayn's first comic novel "The Tin Men" (1965), about programming a computer to produce an "automated newspaper". "But people really preferred an air crash. ... What people enjoyed most was about 70 dead, with some 20 survivors including children rescued after at least one night in open boats. They liked it to be backed up with a story about a middle-aged housewife who had been booked to fly aboard the plane but who had changed her mind at the last moment."