I really enjoyed Alexis C. Madrigal’s “How Netflix Reverse Engineered Hollywood” article. My curiosity is now somewhat satisfied because I have a better understanding of how Netflix has been so darn good at making recommendations for me. It’s amazing how capable the site is of categorizing 76,897 unique ways to describe types of movies. That number for me is hard to wrap my mind around. In many ways, the purpose of categorization is to help make finding information easier, but can it ever be too much where the opposite is done and the purpose of categorization is lost?
The author of the article, Madrigal, mentioned something that I found interesting. We also touched upon it in class, and that is: the importance of language in categorization aka controlled vocabulary. Madrigal states in the article, “Netflix created a vocabulary” that was used in determining how alt-genres would be categorized on the website. To even begin categorization, there needs to be some sort of agreement made by everyone who will be contributing to the categorization. So those at Netflix had to come up with a specific vocabulary that they could understand and that the audience could understand, no matter where they were from. And like Madrigal stated, they did quite a good job in pinpointing the best terms to use. I mean, “20th Century Period Pieces Based On Real Life”? It’s almost scarily too accurate, which is why Netflix is so good at making recommendations for its viewers.
This also reminded me of the extent other websites try to manage the vast number of categories on the web, and how sometimes it does not work well. Netflix, as a private company, created the language used on the site, which users have to agree with. But that is not the case on forum-like websites where the users create and agree on the common language. Reddit, a very popular site that I’m sure many of my fellow college students know all too well, has for the most part, successfully categorized a large number of sub-categorizations. There are about 6000 active subreddits online. The title of each subreddit, has in some way, been agreed upon by the users. For example, the subreddit, /r/aww features pictures, videos, and stories of all things cute (mostly animals). It might seem like a minute change of detail, but what if someone were to search for /r/awww, instead? (an added ‘w’ included in the word ‘aww’)
The official /r/aww subreddit:
The very similar /r/awww subreddit:
There are users on both subreddits and both are active, meaning posts have been submitted within the past 24 hours. And as you can see, both have users on each site, though one has far more. For those using the subreddit /r/awww, they may not know of the common agreement that /r/aww is a more popular subreddit among users, and that separates them from being able to get the same information.
Reddit has acknowledged the differences between subreddits and has begun to direct users to the other, more popular subreddits minimizing the number of categorizations on the site.
Source: Alexis C. Madrigal, “How Netflix Reverse Engineered Hollywood,” The Atlantic, January 2, 2014