Why I started a free, on-demand curation service for Netflix

I started Sense (www.wemakesense.co) because I increasingly became concerned with how Netflix was handling the recommendation portion of their product. I saw an ever-consuming reliance on data and computers that strayed away from what recommendations should be about. I wanted to make recommendations more human.

Below are some quick, short examples of the issues that Sense is working on correcting:

- Your recommended 'Top Picks' is a list of 25+ movies

This is a subset list of a list. You're already swarmed with movie choices in Netflix. You still have to decide between a ton of options here

- 1-5 star rating systems and predictors miss the point of recommendations

The goal of a recommender is to give you a movie that you'll enjoy spending your time in. It's not to give you something you'll like '4.223' or '3.4445' stars out of 5. The essence of a recommender is lost in this detail

- Recommending fully done by computers. No personal touch.

Human curation can be infused into the system without total overhaul

- You can love Fantasia without being a kid

After watching Fantasia, you'll be presented with suggestions to watch children's movies next. This is because of a reliance on a 'kids' tag to the movie. But Netflix knows more about me than that. They know I am a male in my 20s. I can appreciate Fantasia for other reasons

- 'Top Picks' and 'More like this' are a scatterplot of all kinds of different movies

This does little to center in on the things people enjoy within a specific movie. Instead it feels like darts being thrown at a dartboard