July 11, 2003
Click. Not interested. Click.
I just spent way too long rating music on Amazon. I figured I'd take some time and "train" its recommendation algorithms a little, sort of like Tivo owners have to train their systems not to give them gay programming or hours of Barney just because one show was watched by a visiting, um, lesbian 4-year-old.
Unfortunately, Amazon's algorithm or whatever isn't as powerful or canny as Tivo's -- it latches onto a recommendation and then feeds you every permutation of that item. I had to clear every They Might Be Giants, Green Day, Primus and AC/DC album ever made out of my music recommendations (by saying I wasn't interested in them) just because I said I owned or somewhat liked one album by each band. I had to do the same to get rid of CD singles. In movies, I've been given the choice of John Cusac's entire filmography, as well as most of John Hughes' dircetorial ouvre. Not that that's a bad thing, necessarily. I also had to tell Amazon I owned some items more than once before they disappeared from the list.
The problem is, if someone says they're a fan of a band, it's not a good sales technique to then offer that band's entire discography -- chances are, if they're a fan, they have a good portion of it already. What one is most likely looking for is recommendation of other bands they'd like, based on their input.
I've also noticed that my purchasing records are apparently not factored into recommendations, and different variants of the same item are apparently not connected or corrulated in Amazon's database: My second-to-last purchase was Radiohead's "Hail to the Thief," limited edition packaging, and the number one music recommendation delivered today was "Hail to the Thief," the regular edition.
Once I cleared out the neredowells and the duplicates in the recommendations lists, new stuff started to pop up, but again it tended to lump several albums by the same band together, or follow a different actor's career. Very frustrating.
Posted by Andrew Huff at July 11, 2003 03:16 PMDon't rely on technology to make your consumer choices for you. (Snarkily - brandoni)
Posted by: bran at July 11, 2003 04:59 PMactually, I disagree with the "you have all albums already". Amazon has convinced me to pick up some stuff by people that I already had, but just not that album (or when new music comes out).
So I guess I'm what you're fighting against.
Posted by: brian at July 11, 2003 05:15 PMI think you're better off using the "Other people who bought this XXXXX also bought YYYYY" if you want to go automated. More useful for finding related items on Amazon are the lists that people create. I've found several albums I wouldn't have been introduced to otherwise because of the hand made lists.
Agreed on the automatic recommender, it's crap.
Posted by: kegz at July 11, 2003 05:54 PMI find that the automatic recommender on Amazon works well for me, but that's because I tend to browse for cds from musicals rather than albums by single performers or bands. It often suggests shows by the same writers, composers, and actors, and since theatre is so incestuous (in that everybody works with everybody else at one point or another) the suggestions make quite a bit of sense.
When I start looking at albums by mainstream artists though, I do get the same boring, repetitive suggestions that you've noticed. It seems like an intelligent recommendation system somewhere inbetween Amazon's and Tivo's is in order here.
Posted by: Rickie Beth at July 11, 2003 10:14 PMTiVo's Suggestion system is pretty goofy at the start. When we first got ours, it recommended the gripping Headline News and about 50,000 other CNN programs. One thumb down on the appropriate news show (O'Reilly Factor), and poof! No more.
Thing is, it now mostly suggests programs that we already know and like - which indicates to me that there just isn't anything worthwhile out there, or we need to see every single episode of Seinfeld and The Cosby Show three times before we get the good stuff.
Posted by: Paul at July 14, 2003 07:16 AMwhat I hate is that if I buy someone something, the system thinks it's a choice to recommend for me! argh!
Posted by: Roni at July 14, 2003 10:36 AMI agree w/Andrew. Amazon is a gret site for knowledge-surfing and learning how to do so is an art. But the preference-guesser is ass-flavored. Just try to get it to tell you when something new about Papua New Guinea has been published or choosing a particular performance of a classical piece. Other pet peeve: typing "Islands of History" into the search box and NOT getting the book "Islands of History" as the #1 result.
Posted by: Alex at July 14, 2003 02:10 PM