Clearly the Prize has been a great thing for Netflix, in several ways. What will they do as a follow-up, once the Prize is won, and the press dies down?
I'd up the number and start it all over if I were them.
I'd love to see them add another data point to the next challenge. We have user ratings & date; when teams actually started utilizing date instead of ignoring it like Cinematch the scores shot up significantly. Imagine if they added something else to the dataset; perhaps movies that have been "viewed" and/or "queued" by users but have not been rated or something more off-the-wall like some basic demographic data or what level of Netflix plan they subscribe to.
You have a great point there... personally, when I used to subscribe to Nexflix, I wish there was a button that said, "I've seen this movie". That way, they could know which movies I've seen (and like/dislike) outside their system.
5 million for an additional 5%? Something like that, you mean?