(2010-12-11) Odonnell Recommendation Systems

Charlie O Donnell on the hotness of Recommendation System-s (Personalization). Yet, at the end of the day, it’s not clear to me that technology is really solving the problem nearly as much as plain old experts and content. Technology was supposed to be the great equalizer, democratizing recommendations and killing off the need for Zagats, critics, etc—yet I find that solutions that take critics into considerations often to be the most useful. Sure, the definition of a critic has widened—like a music or food blogger—but getting recommendations from people with an intense and nearly fulltime focus on an area is hard to replace, and effective to productize... I think the big issue is that context is important—why do I want a particular recommendation at any given time and how much info do you have about my situation? Am I looking for a mystery book? A happy hour bar with a chill atmosphere? Do I even know what the heck I want and can I be trusted to give you enough data in the request?