Here's a good publicity stunt: Netflix, the online movie rental service, will award $1 million to the first person who can improve the accuracy of its movie recommendations. How do you do that? We're
not sure, but we would like a million dollars. Anyway, here's how the contest works: Netflix wants someone to devise a system that's more accurate than the company's current recommendation system by
at least 10 percent--and to improve the quality of research, Netflix is making 100 million of its customers' movie ratings available anonymously to the public, which it says is the largest of its kind
ever released. Recommendation systems try to predict whether a customer will like a movie based on how they reviewed other movies and whether those movies were rated highly by other like-minded
people. Computer scientists have said that after years of study in this field there has been a slowdown, but Netflix, which stands to benefit from matching more of the kind of movies they enjoy, is
challenging the public to take the next step forward. "If we knew how to do it, we'd have already done it," said Reed Hastings, chief executive of Netflix. "And we're pretty darn good at this now.
We've been doing it a long time." Not only is this a good publicity stunt from Netflix, but the winner, in theory anyway, is going to solve a big problem for them. That's one way to engage your
consumer base. It should be noted, however, that this isn't really one for the general public, which is to say the GP could certainly give it a shot, but statisticians and mathematicians are the ones
Netflix is hoping to see big things from.
Read the whole story at The New York Times »