Various desktop/ mobile applications (say Instagram, Netflix, Youtube, etc) give recommended content to a user.
How are they able to do that? I wanted to learn what’s the technical aspect that goes behind it.
In: 4
Algorithms.
Basically a set of instructions for a computer to follow and learn from.
In the case of recommendations on Netflix, the Netflix servers are processing all the watching data that people are doing, finding similarities in the data, and using the similarities to make predictions for other people.
Example: 5000 people watch Show A. Out of the same 5000 people, 4000 also watch Show B.
Algorithm decides that these shows must have a common appeal to have such a big viewer overlap.
So if new person watches Show A, they will subsequently be recommended Show B by Netflix, with the algorithm logic being ‘if 4 out of 5 people watching Show A liked Show B, this person will probably like it too’
Every time you make the choice to watch something on Netflix, your decisions are logged as part of your user data, and the algorithms can make more accurate predictions (in theory) with more information.
It’s the same principle with everything that recommends you stuff based on your consumption. Open a new Amazon account and buy ten Stephen King novels and you will be recommended more Stephen King novels… And also things that other people who have bought a lot of Stephen King novels have bought.
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