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Interesting how early on amazon had pegged personalized recommendations as a key differentiator between the physical and online spaces. What amazes me is how e
by eterm 13y ago
Interesting how early on amazon had pegged personalized recommendations as a key differentiator between the physical and online spaces.
What amazes me is how even 15 years later this is something that a lot of online stores still do quite poorly.
- mgkimsal 13y agoI had a couple friends in tech group at Borders back in the late 90's. I paid a visit once, and had a guy show me a personalization/recommendation engine he'd built - in his spare time - which was pretty damn good. It was essentially a book 'locker' - input all your book info - even stuff you didn't buy at borders.com - and it would give you better recommendations, news, etc. Obviously could have been better, but he couldn't convince anyone with any power at Borders that this was even remotely useful for the company. He'd seen this future and did a decent first pass of this in 1998/1999. I believe he left soon after that, and we see what happened to Borders. This really touches on the 'lifestyle business' article currently on the front page here, which had something like "sales and marketing are the #1 skill". The older I get, the more this hits home. Your idea can be brilliant, but if you can't sell people on it, you're never getting any traction.