The essence of today's reading assignment is the flaws in physical organization - primarily the problem of only being able to put a book in one place - and the strengths of digital organization, in which there are as many ways to find an item as there are users.
Netflix seems the best example. In addition to being an excellent service, the site itself is very well assembled. Movies can of course be browsed by category, but listings appear in multiple places, making it easier to find a movie you'll enjoy. The Rocky Horror Picture Show, for example, is listed under 'Classics', 'Cult Comedies', 'Contemporary Movie Musicals', 'Spoofs and Satire', 'Gay & Lesbian Comedies', 'Must-See Musicals', and 'Musicals'. Additionally it can be found in a variety of user-created lists, or stumbled upon while surfing by actor, or - perhaps most importantly - by recommendation. The Netflix recommendation system is one of the more complex that I have seen, and useful to a degree that sometimes seems creepy. Having rated over 1,700 movies, I find that the system accurately predicts how I will rate something 95% of the time, and the exception is inevitably something that surprises me as well. It's also appealing in a Web 2.0 sort of way as well, because Netflix has offered large cash incentives to people who can come up with useful improvements to the system, and opened an API, allowing Netflix users to manipulate their data in new ways. (I recommend FeedFlix.)
On the whole, I consider Netflix a slightly purer example of a new organization structure - Amazon's goal is, at the core, to sell you a book. With Netflix, if you're using their system, you're already a member - their concern is simply finding you as many good movies as possible, thus keeping you a member.
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I really liked your example of Netflix. I have never used the site personally, but do know of it and found it to be a helpful explanation to go along with the text we read. Netflix sounds like a site that does a great job of organizing movies to help the searcher find exactly what he/she is looking for or may be interested in. I think it's interesting that you describe it as a purer example than Amazon because Amazon seems to ultimately be looking out for itself instead of its customers.
ReplyDeleteSince I am not a Netflix user, what do you mean when you say the site allows users to manipulate their data in new ways?
I started to get in to it in the post but ran out of room (that 300 word count is a killer). The site I linked, FeedFlix, allows you to see how much you spend per movie, how often you return movies, how long you keep them, that sort of thing. With graphs! It's very neat.
ReplyDeleteOther sites allow things like randomized movie queues, and there's one where you abandon your queue to community selection, which strikes me as a maddening but useful way to find movies you might never have encountered otherwise. The API was only launched a few months ago, so the truly interesting things are still on the way.
Patrick,
ReplyDeleteFeel free to go over 300 words if you want.