Hehe.
Overnight I just got an email from the bot at Amazon. Wanna guess what is is recommending for me. I’ll give you some background on what I search for at Amazon roughly in order.
1.Computer books like JAVA, Jython, and SQL, and relational theory.
2. Computer games.
3. Computer hardware
4. Electronics equipment like DSLRs, HDMI cables.
5. Tools
6. Kitchen gadgets.
Now can any of you use your weak meatbag logic to think of a package of things that might interest me? Well, you will never match the mighty compu-logic of the suggest-o-bot at Amazon, after carefully crunching the numbers it has pointed me toward…
A bunch of trashy Amish Widow romance books??? WTF? At least that’s what I am guessing from the titles and cover art. First of all I had no idea there were trashy Amish widow romance novels, let alone 20 or so of them. Second of all I have never looked at any Novels. Nor have I looked at anything ‘romance’ expect possibly some bath crap to round-out a birthday present to my mom 5 years ago. I am positive I have never looked at anything either Amish or widow centric.
Well at least it was a giggle for the early morning, but how about A little effort Mr. bot? You drink a bit too much last night and come into work with a hangover or something?
I think the one from Borders has gone insane too. Every coupon I get it has recommendations for me, of books that I’ve already bought, from their store. Thanks for the help there buddy, and the useless coupon.
What I have deduced is that a large part of their associations come from other users’ odd pairings. Someone else bought/searched A and B around the same time, if you look for A then Amazon will suggest B.
From time-to-time I try entering a musical group into Amazon hoping it would suggest a similar sounding group. Never, ever even close. What I’m seeing is
someone else’s eclectic tastes.
Amish romance is a popular chunk of the Christian fiction market. It’s not marketed to actual Amish people, but to Evangelicals who want romance + chastity + a touch of the exotic, sort of. It’s been big for several years now, I think it replaced the ‘generic pioneer setting’ Christian romance.
When I’m bored I check their suggestions, otherwise, they are useless. For the most part they could just as easily recommend random shit and be as useful. Their recommendations seem to fall into
*More *books by an author I already buy. Really, if I liked *one *I might like the others? And you don’t think I *knew *to look for them?
More stuff but a different brand of stuff I just bought. Seriously, how many wireless modems could I need? The first one did what I needed, no need to recommend 4 other brands.
Odd recommendations that don’t seem to have any relationship to anything. In my recommendations now: BIC Mechanical Pencil with Colorful Barrels, Thick Point (0.9 mm), 24 Pencils because I bought read/write DVDs. Laser boresighter for gunsmiths and serious shooters because I bought a food blender.
The algorithm has been explained here. It was something like: check to see what others who bought your item are also buying. I suppose if they are getting more sales because of it, it is useful to them. But as I said, for me just showing me random stuff would be nearly as useful.
My favorite was: Buy book XXXX because… you just bought book XXXX. Yes, they recommended I buy the *same *book from them that I had just bought.
If they were really wanting to be helpful, they’d add “Never show me shit like this again” buttons. I don’t buy computer games. Ever. Stop recommending them to me! There certain artists and authors I loathe that pop up all the time because I like someone else. Life would be simpler if we could excise crap like this from their lists.
Here’s my guess. On August 9, USA Today published an article, both in the paper and online, on Amish romance novels. The article probably caused thousands of people to search for them on Amazon, which completely threw off the recommendation bot.
I once bought a present for one of my nieces or nephews from Amazon, which meant that for years afterward I was always getting recommendations for baby toys and clothes.
In recent years I’ve used Amazon to pick up older SF and mystery books, and now I keep getting recommendations for things like Nero Wolfe audio books and reprints (I already have all of them) and Heinlein reprints (ditto).
No no, just because you bought Romeo and Juliet it doesn’t mean you want books on how to teach it to a class. Other people get those recs too, right? It’s a sad statement on their view of humanity if they think the only people buying classic literature are teachers.
Anyway, the weirdest recs I’ve gotten from amazon:
We recommend “Singing in the Rain” on DVD becuse you recently bought Paint Shop Pro 8.
We recommend World of Warcraft because you’re recently bough The Reckoning by Sharon Kay Penman.
It’s just insane. I checked “I own it” for one Harry Potter book it recommended. It recommended another, I checked “I own it”, lather, rinse repeat until all the books are covered. Then it starts recommending the paperback version, check “not interested”, it recommends some special edition hardback, again “not interested”, then it recommends the audio book. How many editions of the same fucking book do you think I want!? Just when I think they can’t come up with any more versions, they recommend the Amish Widow version. That’s when I finally decide to go into my settings and check “do not use for recommendations” on all the previous books.