Is developing a recommendation technology a good business idea?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1911991

by rohi81 • 16 years ago

2 2 16 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I know that there are quite a few people who work on these technologies in context of ecommerce websites and have made some strides e.g. baynote, strands, amazon (mighty) and directedge. Each of them claim to have their own secret sauce and still there is some room in the market. Do these recommendation engines consider values of a person(measurable by actions, behavior,q&a) and personality in making recommendation?<p>And the last thing is , is it a good business idea to get into? Any thoughts and suggestions are welcome.

pedalpete• 16 years ago

Maybe you can clarify what you mean by 'values of a person' which the recommendation engines are considering. You mention measurable by actions, behaviors. Wouldn't you consider Amazons recommendations engine behavior based. They bought the book, wrote a review, others rated the review, etc. etc.

To use Pandora as an example, they do a ton of metrics to measure what a song sounds like, however their most valuable metrics and the reason the system keeps getting better is the collaborative filtering Pandora receives from the thumbs-up/thumbs-down of users.

So, unless you can give an example of other values, I'm not sure I'm understanding that part of your question.

As far as a business idea, many have tried to sell access to a recommendation system to run on customer data. I think most of these companies fail because recommendation systems are difficult to measure, and look like a high cost to customers. There are lots of recommendation algorithms available which can fairly easily be built into most solutions.

You mention strands which I haven't looked at in a long time, and now is a 'digital log for active people'.

Take a look at echonest. they've been around for quite a while, and may be one of the better music recommendation companies out there, but I wouldn't exactly say they are hugely successful.

I think there are lots of 'good enough' implementations of a custom recommendation engine that can be made by most companies who are already creating value with products or information.

If you have an idea or a market you are looking to build a recommendation engine for, I'd suggest building the entire company, and not just the recommendation engine. Recommendations are not a unique proposition in most markets.

rohi81• 16 years ago

@pedalpete great suggestion about why not build the whole company around it rather than just the recommendation system. I will seriously consider this.

Thanks, Rohit

Is developing a recommendation technology a good business idea?

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