Ask HN: Recommender systems (Amazon, Spotify, Netflix etc.) getting any better?

1 pointonuralp2 comments

Recommendation systems are arguably low-hanging fruits for popular machine learning algorithms. How good are recommendation systems (book recommendation, shopping bundles, songs you might like etc.) in your experience over the years?

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Check what those companies spend on data science teams, and rethink “low hanging fruit.” It’s incredibly nuanced once you solve the easy wins.

Low-hanging in the following sense: the premise - I tell you what I like, you tell me what else I might like - is compelling for the consumer, therefore, input is not the limiting factor. Moreover, recommender systems at such massive companies must be particularly amenable to A/B testing to help profile their customers more accurately. Finally, performance metrics are straightforward and easy to calculate.

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