I admittedly haven’t tried this one (I guess I will), but this was also the promise of Goodreads, and Netflix since the DVD era, and it just never seems to work for me.
I have admittedly discovered a handful of great authors via Goodreads recommendations, but they’re big names I think I would have eventually found anyway (e.g. Brandon Sanderson), and I spent a lot of time adding books I’d read and carefully considering how to rate each one.
I’m actually broadly curious why these systems aren’t more effective. It seems like such a perfect system on paper.
One reason is that Netflix killed theirs after paying a prize of $1M for a 10% improvement to their already good Cinematch recommender. See: https://www.netflixprize.com/
I have admittedly discovered a handful of great authors via Goodreads recommendations, but they’re big names I think I would have eventually found anyway (e.g. Brandon Sanderson), and I spent a lot of time adding books I’d read and carefully considering how to rate each one.
I’m actually broadly curious why these systems aren’t more effective. It seems like such a perfect system on paper.