I just got back from a few days of workshop and backpacking but am not in much of a mind to talk about it, so I ask you this question that is very far from my current mood, but which I was reminded of by the demands of relaxing upon returning home:
Why does Netflix—a service that recommends what to watch based on one’s observed tastes, and which has separate profiles for each member of one’s household—not offer recommendations for pairs or groups of people, who individually have profiles?
I don’t see how this can be hard, if they have good recommendations for both individuals. For instance, they could just check everything suggested above a certain bar for Alice and see if it’s also suggested so for Bob. Even something very janky would seem to be better than the pair doing something equivalent manually (for instance, looking over Alice’s recommendations, and parsing what each one is well enough for Bob to judge if he would like it). But I bet they can do much better.
Group recommendations would also seem to be extremely useful. I’d guess a large fraction of the time that a person wants to watch something, they want to do it with someone else. And furthermore it seems substantially harder to figure out what two people would like to watch together than just oneself, perhaps because neither person has great access to the other person’s mind, so anything that fares well on an intuitive glance then has to be explained to the other person. I’m not sure.
Is there some good reason they don’t? Am I wrong somehow? Do people use Spotify Blend as much as I would have predicted?
I just got back from a few days of workshop and backpacking but am not in much of a mind to talk about it, so I ask you this question that is very far from my current mood, but which I was reminded of by the demands of relaxing upon returning home:
Why does Netflix—a service that recommends what to watch based on one’s observed tastes, and which has separate profiles for each member of one’s household—not offer recommendations for pairs or groups of people, who individually have profiles?
I don’t see how this can be hard, if they have good recommendations for both individuals. For instance, they could just check everything suggested above a certain bar for Alice and see if it’s also suggested so for Bob. Even something very janky would seem to be better than the pair doing something equivalent manually (for instance, looking over Alice’s recommendations, and parsing what each one is well enough for Bob to judge if he would like it). But I bet they can do much better.
Group recommendations would also seem to be extremely useful. I’d guess a large fraction of the time that a person wants to watch something, they want to do it with someone else. And furthermore it seems substantially harder to figure out what two people would like to watch together than just oneself, perhaps because neither person has great access to the other person’s mind, so anything that fares well on an intuitive glance then has to be explained to the other person. I’m not sure.
Is there some good reason they don’t? Am I wrong somehow? Do people use Spotify Blend as much as I would have predicted?