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Really? Nothing good? From any algorithm at all? How can you be so sure? Amazon seems to do a pretty good job thinking up new stuff I might like with its algori

Really? Nothing good? From any algorithm at all? How can you be so sure? Amazon seems to do a pretty good job thinking up new stuff I might like with its algorithms, for one.

newman314 14y ago
Try an Amazon account which is shared with family members. Amazon thinks I like electronics, Hello Kitty and bows.
- corporalagumbo 14y ago
  I've got an arduino-powered robotic bow-gun firing Hello Kitty droid-doll you might be interested in...
- batiudrami 14y ago
  Well, that's hardly Amazon's fault, it is?
  - incongruity 14y ago
    Never mind that one account used for shopping for a family is a fairly common use case...
    - TeMPOraL 14y ago
      Do you want them to start reading your mind, or stop suggesting stuff altogether?
      - koide 14y ago
        They could realize those things are not usually liked by the same person, ask a user if this is a family account and let you define family members and their preferences within that account.
      - incongruity 14y ago
        As suggested by another commenter, that's a false dichotomy. I'd argue there's lots of room for innovation and refinement here. Manual or algorithmic identification of family members is one option, but I think there's something more to be gained here by understanding the behavior just a bit more abstractly... Shopping moods? Modes? Targets? Tasks? Something, possibly – but I'm only guessing here. The real power could come from actually working with/doing user research and prototyping. I'd love the chance to work on such a project, actually – I had a chance to work with data from a study on the online shopping habits of mothers a few years ago and there's lots of interesting angles to possibly explore, IMHO.
- drivebyacct2 14y ago
  Honestly, I have to be nervous logging into my personal account with other people standing around. The "Recently Viewed" and "Recommended for You" are full of things I'd really rather my family members and most of my friends see.
  - cheald 14y ago
    I suspect you meant "not see". That said, you can manage that at http://www.amazon.com/gp/history http://www.amazon.com/gp/history
psbp 14y ago
I don't think he's saying that at all. The insanity is trying to construct a platform that manifests a person's entire social life. I think there's a harsh combination of conflating business interests and disinterested, contrived people sorting that is potentially very, very bad.
- corporalagumbo 14y ago
  I'm not sure I follow you. Right now, Facebook knows roughly this much about me: 1) All of the people I have legitimated as Friends. 2) Screeds and screeds of data about the quality of all my connections with those friends (have I hid them from my news-feed? how much do I interact with their posts? how much do I interact with them? talk to them? share with them? stalk them? how much time do I spend in interactions with them? how do the patterns of my interactions change with them (mouse-click patterns, scroll patterns, typing patterns)? do I use different words (different emotions/more formal/informal language/different function word patterns?) 3) People I've stalked but haven't friended 4) Brands, companies, causes, ideas, things from history, all sorts of random shit I've liked (along with similar data to 2)) 5) What sorts of things I click on, how I leave the site and where I go. And certainly more. Etc., etc., etc. Facebook didn't manifest my entire social life. They just built a platform which allowed me to socialise orders of magnitude more efficiently than before, a platform of great benefit to me, and one into which I've poured vast quantities of data (and the amount, quality and variety of the data is only set to increase as we open up more input modalities - eg eye-tracking, gesture-tracking, and biometrics). the data is all there. All facebook is doing is cobbling together some of the most very basic tools one might use to make sense of a subset of that data.
  - psbp 14y ago
    Do any of your family members under 12 have facebook? Imagine the aggregate of all their experiences in a decade or more.
    - corporalagumbo 14y ago
      My little brother and sister had it from 11 and 12 respectively. Yes, it's quite interesting to think about. Anyway, what's your point? By the way, you're discussing this with someone who believes that in the future we will record and utilise orders of magnitude more amount of data about our lives and our planet than we do now, enough to make your eyes water, and furthermore, that we are inexorably fated to do so, and furthermore, that it's a really, really good trend, one which is going to play out in highly unpredictable and surprising ways.

Really? Nothing good? From any algorithm at all? How can you be so sure? Amazon seems to do a pretty good job thinking up new stuff I might like with its algorithms, for one.

newman314 14y ago

Try an Amazon account which is shared with family members. Amazon thinks I like electronics, Hello Kitty and bows.

corporalagumbo 14y ago
I've got an arduino-powered robotic bow-gun firing Hello Kitty droid-doll you might be interested in...
batiudrami 14y ago
Well, that's hardly Amazon's fault, it is?
- incongruity 14y ago
  Never mind that one account used for shopping for a family is a fairly common use case...
  - TeMPOraL 14y ago
    Do you want them to start reading your mind, or stop suggesting stuff altogether?
    - koide 14y ago
      They could realize those things are not usually liked by the same person, ask a user if this is a family account and let you define family members and their preferences within that account.
    - incongruity 14y ago
      As suggested by another commenter, that's a false dichotomy. I'd argue there's lots of room for innovation and refinement here. Manual or algorithmic identification of family members is one option, but I think there's something more to be gained here by understanding the behavior just a bit more abstractly... Shopping moods? Modes? Targets? Tasks? Something, possibly – but I'm only guessing here. The real power could come from actually working with/doing user research and prototyping. I'd love the chance to work on such a project, actually – I had a chance to work with data from a study on the online shopping habits of mothers a few years ago and there's lots of interesting angles to possibly explore, IMHO.
drivebyacct2 14y ago
Honestly, I have to be nervous logging into my personal account with other people standing around. The "Recently Viewed" and "Recommended for You" are full of things I'd really rather my family members and most of my friends see.
- cheald 14y ago
  I suspect you meant "not see". That said, you can manage that at http://www.amazon.com/gp/history http://www.amazon.com/gp/history

psbp 14y ago

I don't think he's saying that at all. The insanity is trying to construct a platform that manifests a person's entire social life. I think there's a harsh combination of conflating business interests and disinterested, contrived people sorting that is potentially very, very bad.

corporalagumbo 14y ago
I'm not sure I follow you. Right now, Facebook knows roughly this much about me: 1) All of the people I have legitimated as Friends. 2) Screeds and screeds of data about the quality of all my connections with those friends (have I hid them from my news-feed? how much do I interact with their posts? how much do I interact with them? talk to them? share with them? stalk them? how much time do I spend in interactions with them? how do the patterns of my interactions change with them (mouse-click patterns, scroll patterns, typing patterns)? do I use different words (different emotions/more formal/informal language/different function word patterns?) 3) People I've stalked but haven't friended 4) Brands, companies, causes, ideas, things from history, all sorts of random shit I've liked (along with similar data to 2)) 5) What sorts of things I click on, how I leave the site and where I go. And certainly more. Etc., etc., etc. Facebook didn't manifest my entire social life. They just built a platform which allowed me to socialise orders of magnitude more efficiently than before, a platform of great benefit to me, and one into which I've poured vast quantities of data (and the amount, quality and variety of the data is only set to increase as we open up more input modalities - eg eye-tracking, gesture-tracking, and biometrics). the data is all there. All facebook is doing is cobbling together some of the most very basic tools one might use to make sense of a subset of that data.
- psbp 14y ago
  Do any of your family members under 12 have facebook? Imagine the aggregate of all their experiences in a decade or more.
  - corporalagumbo 14y ago
    My little brother and sister had it from 11 and 12 respectively. Yes, it's quite interesting to think about. Anyway, what's your point? By the way, you're discussing this with someone who believes that in the future we will record and utilise orders of magnitude more amount of data about our lives and our planet than we do now, enough to make your eyes water, and furthermore, that we are inexorably fated to do so, and furthermore, that it's a really, really good trend, one which is going to play out in highly unpredictable and surprising ways.