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> Even Netflix ... doesn't do a particularly good job of [discovery]. I see this message repeated by a lot of tech people, but I feel like I get fairly good re

> Even Netflix ... doesn't do a particularly good job of [discovery]. I see this message repeated by a lot of tech people, but I feel like I get fairly good recommendations. Am I alone? What is it about the recommendations that seem bad? Is it because you know there is better content there but the metadata has somehow not categorized it properly for cross-referencing, or does it seem more like it's guessing from a shallow pool and trying to bubble up whatever content it can find, even if it's not a great match? Is there any kind of open source recommendation framework or standard? Couldn't Netflix publish the details of its algorithm, including which metrics it has, to help the community think up more ways to analyze? The value in Netflix right now is in the content, not in the recommendation engine. Looks like the competition Netflix used to host was ended in 2009... would be great if they started it again: http://www.netflixprize.com http://www.netflixprize.com

jmduke 13y ago
I'd argue that Netflix is high-precision, low-recall: the quality of recommendations are usually good, but the recommendations themselves usually don't reflect the entire library.
waterlesscloud 13y ago
I had a response written to this, but realized I haven't thought it through enough to respond meaningfully. I know I'm dissatisfied. I know it doesn't show me movies I very much want to see, and that it clutters my recommendations with a lot of things I'll never watch. My feeling is that it doesn't capture why I like the movies I like. The categories they've been refining over the years are likely an attempt to address that, but they seem to be missing the important information still. Hmm. PS- re the contest, there was a problem with the anonymized data being de-anonymized by researchers, so they couldn't make it available any more.
drabiega 13y ago
Given my anecdotal experiences of this problem I would guess that Netflix's problem isn't a matter of figuring out what I would like, it's a matter of figuring out what I may not have seen yet. The problem is that the things that I am most likely to like based on my viewings are also the things that I am most likely to have already seen somewhere other than Netflix.
glenra 13y ago
I suspect it's that last one. I mostly use netflix in streaming mode. The pool of available content netflix is allowed to stream at any given time is pathetic - most of the best matches they could make are films they don't have so they have to settle for suggesting something half-assed that they do have. As a result, I find myself gradually tending more and more to use various other streaming services first, and only settle for Netflix if I can't find it somewhere else first. (I should just cancel Netflix entirely but haven't gotten around to it yet.) Their suggestions seemed better when they were a mail-only service and hence not subject to the same limited pool. (A separate factor: when I initially got Netflix there was a HUGE list of movies I wanted to see and hadn't yet; over time that pool also has substantially diminished. So there might be fewer good matches to find even if Netflix had unlimited scope to provide the good matches.)
afterburner 13y ago
I briefly used Netflix several years ago, and was astonished at how good the recommendations were. However, I aggressively rated many movies in their catalogue to get better recommendations, movies I'd seen before not necessarily just movies I'd watched on Netflix. When I talked to others who had it, and didn't like their recommendations, it seemed to be because they weren't rating the movies at all. Maybe they couldn't be bothered, maybe they assumed it would know based on what they watched, or maybe because these were couples I often talked to it was awkward to bring up rating the movie when there were potentially two different opinions on it, and one or both parties unwilling to debate the issue...

jmduke 13y ago

I'd argue that Netflix is high-precision, low-recall: the quality of recommendations are usually good, but the recommendations themselves usually don't reflect the entire library.

waterlesscloud 13y ago

I had a response written to this, but realized I haven't thought it through enough to respond meaningfully. I know I'm dissatisfied. I know it doesn't show me movies I very much want to see, and that it clutters my recommendations with a lot of things I'll never watch. My feeling is that it doesn't capture why I like the movies I like. The categories they've been refining over the years are likely an attempt to address that, but they seem to be missing the important information still. Hmm. PS- re the contest, there was a problem with the anonymized data being de-anonymized by researchers, so they couldn't make it available any more.

drabiega 13y ago

Given my anecdotal experiences of this problem I would guess that Netflix's problem isn't a matter of figuring out what I would like, it's a matter of figuring out what I may not have seen yet. The problem is that the things that I am most likely to like based on my viewings are also the things that I am most likely to have already seen somewhere other than Netflix.

glenra 13y ago

I suspect it's that last one. I mostly use netflix in streaming mode. The pool of available content netflix is allowed to stream at any given time is pathetic - most of the best matches they could make are films they don't have so they have to settle for suggesting something half-assed that they do have. As a result, I find myself gradually tending more and more to use various other streaming services first, and only settle for Netflix if I can't find it somewhere else first. (I should just cancel Netflix entirely but haven't gotten around to it yet.) Their suggestions seemed better when they were a mail-only service and hence not subject to the same limited pool. (A separate factor: when I initially got Netflix there was a HUGE list of movies I wanted to see and hadn't yet; over time that pool also has substantially diminished. So there might be fewer good matches to find even if Netflix had unlimited scope to provide the good matches.)

afterburner 13y ago

I briefly used Netflix several years ago, and was astonished at how good the recommendations were. However, I aggressively rated many movies in their catalogue to get better recommendations, movies I'd seen before not necessarily just movies I'd watched on Netflix. When I talked to others who had it, and didn't like their recommendations, it seemed to be because they weren't rating the movies at all. Maybe they couldn't be bothered, maybe they assumed it would know based on what they watched, or maybe because these were couples I often talked to it was awkward to bring up rating the movie when there were potentially two different opinions on it, and one or both parties unwilling to debate the issue...