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netflix-prize posts

Filed under: Internet, News

Netflix is preparing another bounty for better movie recommendations

Netflix PrizeFor the past few years Netflix has been dangling a $1 million prize in front of geeks willing to attempt to come up with a better movie recommendation algorithm than the one Netflix was using. The goal was to improve the Netflix recommendations by 10%. Last month, two teams topped the 10% mark, and it's likely that one of them will win the prize.

In the meantime, Netflix is already looking ahead. In a blog post, Netflix Chief Product Officer Neil Hunt says the winner of the $1 million prize will be announced in September, and that Netflix is planning a sequel.

There's no word on how much money Netflix will offer this time around, but the company is putting time limits on the contests this time. Instead of competing to improve the accuracy of Netflix recommendations by a certain percentage, Netflix will offer prizes to the teams with the best results after 6 months and 18 months.

[via CNET]

Filed under: News, Web services

Netflix Prize update: do we have a winner?



Back in 2006, Netflix launched a contest to improve its movie recommendation algorithm. To win the Netflix Prize, a team has to improve the accuracy of the Netflix movie recommendations by 10% or more. The prize is a million dollars. Now it looks like one team may have won the contest, with a score of 10.05%. Although several teams had come close, nobody was able to hit the 10% mark until members of four top teams joined forces. It's not over yet, though. Other teams now have 30 days to best the 10,05% result, with the prize going to the best overall score.

BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos, the first team to top 10%, includes researchers from Yahoo and AT&T, and many of the team members have collected Netflix's Yearly Progress Prize for their attempts in previous years. The rules of the contest require that the winning team explain how their algorithm works, and allow Netflix to use their work. This victory may have come sooner than Netflix expected: the contest was scheduled to run until 2011 if no one could come up with a suitable solution before then.

Filed under: Internet, Video, Web

Netflix rolls out updated recommendation system

Netflix Prize
Netflix has been a pioneer in the online retail space by providing automated recommendation services that can help you find items that you might like based on your previous video rentals, ratings, and other data. But for the past few years, Netflix has been trying to make its algorithm at least a little bit better through the Netflix Prize contest, which offers cash in exchange for significant improvements to the company's recommendation engine.

And apparently that bounty has been yielding positive results, because Netflix announced this week that it's changed the recommendation system based on improvements submitted through the Netflix Prize contest.

The new algorithm works better for users that rate movies. The system will now predict how many stars you would give movies that you havent' already watched, and that data will affect the movies that are displayed on different personalized sections of the Netflix web site, including the "Movies You'll Love" section.

[via AppScout]

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