4 ms·

Netflix Prize So Close, They Can Taste It

63 points by nreece 17y ago

michael_dorfman 17y ago
Clearly the Prize has been a great thing for Netflix, in several ways. What will they do as a follow-up, once the Prize is won, and the press dies down?
- SwellJoe 17y ago
  I'd up the number and start it all over if I were them.
  - michael_dorfman 17y ago
    5 million for an additional 5%? Something like that, you mean?
  - bayleo 17y ago
    I'd love to see them add another data point to the next challenge. We have user ratings & date; when teams actually started utilizing date instead of ignoring it like Cinematch the scores shot up significantly. Imagine if they added something else to the dataset; perhaps movies that have been "viewed" and/or "queued" by users but have not been rated or something more off-the-wall like some basic demographic data or what level of Netflix plan they subscribe to.
    - ph0rque 17y ago
      You have a great point there... personally, when I used to subscribe to Nexflix, I wish there was a button that said, "I've seen this movie". That way, they could know which movies I've seen (and like/dislike) outside their system.
derefr 17y ago
I find it interesting that there seems to be an asymptotic increase in difficulty right around the 10 percent mark. Did Netflix estimate this before they created the Prize, or did they think it would be easier (or harder) to get there--perhaps that they would have gotten there already?
- robryan 17y ago
  There has to a be a limit to the amount of data that can be taken from what is provided to improve the effectiveness of the suggestions, I'd say there close to the point in which techniques to make sense of the data have reached there limit. The system can only be effective to a point because of the unpredictability of a user.
akronim 17y ago
Surprising that more companies haven't tried to replicate this - there's no way you could get so many qualified people working on something for three years for a million all up as employees. Not to mention the publicity.
- SwellJoe 17y ago
  I can't think of a lot of problems that would work with this kind of contest. It has to be hard enough and interesting enough to be like a game for the world's smartest people, you have to have a prize big enough to make it not an insult, and you have to have an existing solution that is compelling and interesting to talk about. And, of course, you need a dataset so people can know when they've reached the goal. I can think of only a few companies that could do something like this. Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, are obvious choices, since they all tinker with recommendations and other such things for search, videos, and shopping. Apple iTunes, eMusic, Amazon for their stores. What else would work here? A lot of startups are playing in this space, often founded by PhD's, but they don't have the $1mil or the big and interesting dataset and pre-existing market-tested solution.
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  - jhy 17y ago
    I dunno, I think there are plenty of other areas for some competitive CompSci. As a random idea: Oracle puts up $1MM to increase their query optimiser by 10%. Plenty of test data there, easy to measure performance gain through a decrease in CPU / disk IO. And lots of gnarly edge cases. The upshot to the economy in saved cycles could be huge. Or a transcontinental shipping company could run a competition to improve their prop design, or engine design, or their hull design. Fluid dynamics is a challenging, computationally intensive field. And any percent point improvement on these makes real savings. Or a city might put some real smarts behind their traffic light system, and intelligently improve traffic flow. Are they much more than day-parted timers and queue counters today? I think there's plenty of room for other competitions / grants like this :)
jrbedard 17y ago
Good to see 2 engineers from Montreal taking the lead! It's great that Netflix amended its rules to allow Quebec residents to participate.
messel 17y ago
I was psyched about this marketing technique, and social design project from the get go. Even though it's not quote massive collaboration, there is a powerful search implementation being leveraged in having many problem solvers hitting it from different directions simultaneously. Fascinating if this technique can be applied to other problems (akronim totally agree). I wrote up something back in April (but the Harvard group did a better job). The Big Shift (Harvard group): http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/bigshift/ http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/bigshift/ just check out their many posts on collaborative design My link:http://www.victusspiritus.com/2009/04/25/the-search-power-of-collaborative-design/ http://www.victusspiritus.com/2009/04/25/the-search-power-of...
bdr 17y ago
It's surprising that 10% turned out to be such a good target. If it was 5%, it would have been done almost right away, and it looks like 15% might be impossible.

63 points by nreece 17y ago

Clearly the Prize has been a great thing for Netflix, in several ways. What will they do as a follow-up, once the Prize is won, and the press dies down?

SwellJoe 17y ago
I'd up the number and start it all over if I were them.
- michael_dorfman 17y ago
  5 million for an additional 5%? Something like that, you mean?
- bayleo 17y ago
  I'd love to see them add another data point to the next challenge. We have user ratings & date; when teams actually started utilizing date instead of ignoring it like Cinematch the scores shot up significantly. Imagine if they added something else to the dataset; perhaps movies that have been "viewed" and/or "queued" by users but have not been rated or something more off-the-wall like some basic demographic data or what level of Netflix plan they subscribe to.
  - ph0rque 17y ago
    You have a great point there... personally, when I used to subscribe to Nexflix, I wish there was a button that said, "I've seen this movie". That way, they could know which movies I've seen (and like/dislike) outside their system.

derefr 17y ago

I find it interesting that there seems to be an asymptotic increase in difficulty right around the 10 percent mark. Did Netflix estimate this before they created the Prize, or did they think it would be easier (or harder) to get there--perhaps that they would have gotten there already?

robryan 17y ago
There has to a be a limit to the amount of data that can be taken from what is provided to improve the effectiveness of the suggestions, I'd say there close to the point in which techniques to make sense of the data have reached there limit. The system can only be effective to a point because of the unpredictability of a user.

akronim 17y ago

Surprising that more companies haven't tried to replicate this - there's no way you could get so many qualified people working on something for three years for a million all up as employees. Not to mention the publicity.

SwellJoe 17y ago
I can't think of a lot of problems that would work with this kind of contest. It has to be hard enough and interesting enough to be like a game for the world's smartest people, you have to have a prize big enough to make it not an insult, and you have to have an existing solution that is compelling and interesting to talk about. And, of course, you need a dataset so people can know when they've reached the goal. I can think of only a few companies that could do something like this. Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, are obvious choices, since they all tinker with recommendations and other such things for search, videos, and shopping. Apple iTunes, eMusic, Amazon for their stores. What else would work here? A lot of startups are playing in this space, often founded by PhD's, but they don't have the $1mil or the big and interesting dataset and pre-existing market-tested solution.
- cookieliaokai 17y ago
  sexy girls,sugar daddy&baby ,rich successful men, search profiles, online chat.... free sign up on ^-^ http://SugarBabyMeet.com/ http://SugarBabyMeet.com/ ^-^ The largest dating site for sugars. Thousands of single members with hot and sexy figure are here waiting for you. Not only the online relationship, but also find true love near you..
- jhy 17y ago
  I dunno, I think there are plenty of other areas for some competitive CompSci. As a random idea: Oracle puts up $1MM to increase their query optimiser by 10%. Plenty of test data there, easy to measure performance gain through a decrease in CPU / disk IO. And lots of gnarly edge cases. The upshot to the economy in saved cycles could be huge. Or a transcontinental shipping company could run a competition to improve their prop design, or engine design, or their hull design. Fluid dynamics is a challenging, computationally intensive field. And any percent point improvement on these makes real savings. Or a city might put some real smarts behind their traffic light system, and intelligently improve traffic flow. Are they much more than day-parted timers and queue counters today? I think there's plenty of room for other competitions / grants like this :)

jrbedard 17y ago

Good to see 2 engineers from Montreal taking the lead! It's great that Netflix amended its rules to allow Quebec residents to participate.

messel 17y ago

I was psyched about this marketing technique, and social design project from the get go. Even though it's not quote massive collaboration, there is a powerful search implementation being leveraged in having many problem solvers hitting it from different directions simultaneously. Fascinating if this technique can be applied to other problems (akronim totally agree). I wrote up something back in April (but the Harvard group did a better job). The Big Shift (Harvard group): http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/bigshift/ http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/bigshift/ just check out their many posts on collaborative design My link:http://www.victusspiritus.com/2009/04/25/the-search-power-of-collaborative-design/ http://www.victusspiritus.com/2009/04/25/the-search-power-of...

bdr 17y ago

It's surprising that 10% turned out to be such a good target. If it was 5%, it would have been done almost right away, and it looks like 15% might be impossible.