February 22, 2006

Recommendations Alchemy

This is really cool.

Last week we went live with our new recommendations engine powered by the wonderful folks over at Loomia. Our recommendations engine works similar to the ones at Amazon and Netflix in that you will be recommended titles based on how you’ve previously rated titles here at LearnOutLoud.com. The more titles you rate the better your recommendations will get.

Here’s something sweet. This is the only recommendations engine on the web that allows you to rate audio books, podcasts and video and receive recommendations in each of those areas. Throw in a couple of ratings for some audio books you’ve listened to and you might get a great suggestion for a new podcast to listen to. Rate a DVD like Citizen King high and you might be recommended Beyond Vietnam, a free title available from American Rhetoric. The possibilities are limitless.

The first night I tried it out I was expecting much. After all we really don’t have all that much data in the system yet (only a few thousand ratings which isn’t a lot). But what I got back was pretty cool. One of the titles I’m planning to listen to next is The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Sure enough, there it was in my recommendations. Out of the 10,000+ titles on our site this was one of the few recommended to me. Awesome.

Now that might be coincidence but I do know that in the few days I’ve been using this I’ve gotten some great suggestions. My “Wish List” is growing larger by the day. So I’d definitely encourage you to give it a spin. If you haven’t rated very many titles your recommendations might not be all that great. And even if you have it’ll probably take a bit more time to get enough data in the system so this thing really hums.

To use the recommendations engine just click on the “Recommendations” link in the upper-right corner of any page on the site (you’ll need to be registered and logged in to use this). You’ll get a list of your recommendations. If some of the titles on the list are ones you’ve already listened to then make sure you rate them (that will prevent them from showing up again in the future and will help us further tailor your recommendations).

Feel free to make reply to this post in the forums and let us know how good (or bad) your recommendations were. Then go off and rate a bunch of titles so you can get even better recommendations for the future. Please note that the recommendations don’t change in real time so it might take a day or so for you to see the impact in your recommendations listing.

We’re pretty excited about the potential for this. A big thanks to the people at Loomia for all the help getting this going on the site and a special shoutout to David and Francis for their help with the integration.

Go check it out and find yourself some new possibilities for Learning Out Loud!