Major Change in Taste Kid's Results
Sixteen years old Ian wrote to Emmy a few hours ago:
“What happened with the recommendations? They used to be so much better. Whenever I would look for Forrest Gump recommendations my 4 other favorite movies came up (The Shawshank Redemption, Gladiator, Braveheart, The Green Mile) on the list, proving that the system you were using before was working since those are my 5 favorite movies. Now only The Green Mile came up and movies like The Terminal and Cast Away are up top. Did you change how you did this? If so, the old way worked much better.”
I would like to publicly answer to this feedback and explain a little bit what is happening.
Dear Ian, first of all I would like to thank you for using this service and, moreover, for proving me with this feedback. Yes, you are right, a major change has happened, a couple of days ago. You see, Taste Kid’s main goal is to be a discovery engine, to help people explore their taste by finding out about new bands, artists, movies and books. Many people that are using Emmy (including myself) felt that the suggestions where becoming more and more oriented towards popular stuff. Your personal example is great for that matter: you where searching for “Forrest Gump”, and you where given recommendations like The Shawshank Redemption, Gladiator, Braveheart and The Green Mile. Although these are all great movies, it is very unlikely that you haven’t already seen them. I was myself searching for some of my favorite bands or movies, and even though the recommendations where good, I was rarely discovering something new.
To give an example, check the results for Metallica:
http://www.tastekid.com/ask?q=metallica (new/current way)
http://www.tastekid.com/ask?q=metallica&old=1 (old way)
As you can see, using the old approach, the second recommendation for “Metallica” was “Nirvana”. Now, I’m sure people trying to discover new bands somewhat similar to “Metallica” aren’t looking for “Nirvana”; whether they like this band or not, they have most certainly already heard of it.
Given all these, I have decided to make a change. I have changed the formula that determines the relevancy of each result in a way that encourages less popular items to achieve good scores. This is a big gamble for Taste Kid. Up until now, people found it hard to disagree with the results, but, in the same time, they where rarely discovering something new. Now, by promoting less popular items, there is a much bigger chance to screw-up and to get reactions like yours. But I think it’s worth it. Since I’ve performed this change, I have personally discovered several interesting bands and movies that I haven’t heard of up until now. I’m sure there are even better ways of computing this relevancy, but I feel that the new formula is a step forward.
So give it some faith and play with it a little. While the new results have a bigger chance of containing things that you don’t like, in the same time, there is a bigger chance of finding a few things that you will like, and you haven’t heard of before. And this is ultimately Emmy’s goal :)
