Netflix recommendations have an element of peril to them. Can you trust that star rating? Where are these recommendations coming from anyway? You’re a vulnerable but honest citizen who wants to watch something alone in your long underwear, so what should you know about this element of the streaming service? For one, you should probably know that Netflix semi-recently gave this side of their product an update.
Business Insider notes that in December, Netflix adopted a new global recommendation system. Until recently, customers would get their recommendations limited to their region. Reasonable news if you live somewhere massive like the United States, but probably a bit of a headache if you’re looking good samurai flicks from your couch in Liechtenstein. The updated recommendation service chucks out the regional restrictions and uses taste rather than borders as the measure.
Netflix vice president of product innovation Carlos Gomez-Uribe spoke with Tech Insider about the benefits of the current system. He says the emphasis on bypassing global boundaries allows the audience to connect with what they really want: Good stories.
“Great stories travel,” Gomez-Uribe, who led the 60-person team that developed the global algorithm, said. “They just haven’t had a good platform for them to travel on, and now we are able to find the best story for that person regardless of where that story comes from in the world.”
“The global recommendation system revealed one overwhelming truth: great stories transcend borders, and if anything, humans have more in common in terms of how they are moved by great storytelling, regardless of where they live,” he wrote. “It was interesting and inspiring to see how stories that we otherwise thought would appeal to smaller markets actually resonated with people from around the world.”
Speaking of Netflix, the streaming service has been awfully busy lately. (Mind you, that’s sort of their deal these days.) The trailer for Pee-Wee’s Big Holiday has bubbled up, as has the season two preview of Daredevil. 2016 looks to be another promising year for Netflix as an original content provider.
(Via Business Journal)
