His two examples - a custom antique desk or shaving cream that's a delight to use - hammer his point home: despite the abundance of choice online, he who organizes and specializes the data to the user wins.
I have yet to see a truly personalized experience that finds me that one esoteric object that I'd never heard of, but desperately need.
I'm always stunned by how poor Amazon & EBAY's reccomendation engines are, and how infrequently they suggest anything I want or am compelled by.
What start-ups are playing in this space and building something compelling?
Recommendation is really hard. It's not a matter of execution, it's a matter of research -- and that's a risky proposition, because the research may not pan out. I know because I tried it (recommending news, but the problem is similar).
I had two or three ideas for recommendation algorithms. My cofounder had quite a few more than that. Over the course of a year with very little income, we iterated intensively on recommendation engines -- we tried four or five completely different ideas, and refined each one until we got stuck. We had a small, but active, community of people who would try any of our recommendation engines and give us feedback. And the feedback was always "this isn't good enough."
I don't know how to solve the problem. The Netflix Challenge results were not especially algorithmically impressive; most of the benefits seemed to come from iterative tuning to the dataset. I admit that I haven't followed much recent research. I think we need an algorithmic breakthrough (on the order of PageRank) before recommendation startups will succeed.
I don't think it's a recommendation problem. He doesn't want to find products that he naturally likes. He wants someone to take a product that isn't exciting in itself and weave a compelling story around it: what the product means and what the product says about a person who appreciates it. He wants to feel like a connoisseur without being able to recognize quality himself. He wants a salesman to teach him how to appreciate the product and, at the same time, convince him that his appreciation makes him a more sophisticated person.
His example is still smoke and mirrors. The opinion of someone known and trusted just feels more valuable, because of the way our minds are put together. Granted, this may be enough to build a business on.
What he wants would be a search engine that can detect passion. Page Rank only detects this indirectly. Not sure if anything direct is possible.
He wants something to find the perfect product for him, even if he doesn't know there's a need for it.
I guess that's a nice desire for someone with lots of disposable income. I really don't want anyone offering me anything to buy right now, because I don't have the money to spend on a 1800's table instead of what I'm currently using.
When I do have money, then I have my list of priorities about where to spend it. Fix the roof leak, change my car tires, etc...
That's why it's called "buying mode". Offer me a 1700 table today and I will tell you to get real, and get out. Offer me when I actually have the money and desire to buy, and you've made a sale.
Recommendations from people you know might actually be more valuable, if you count things other than the literal quality of the product as part of the equation. For example, post-purchase you have someone to talk to about the thing, whether in a "wow that worked out great, thanks for the suggestion!" sort of way, or to get tips or troubleshooting, or in some cases (like books or films) for discussion.
I think more than that he wants a search engine that projects confidence. Newegg does something I think is brilliant, and somewhat related--it watches what you browse, and if you browse enough without buying anything, it sends you an email the next day basically saying "hey, we noticed you spent six hours last night looking at cheap point and shoots. Here are some cheap point and shoots."
Now, in my case, it didn't work exactly--I had a pretty good idea what camera I wanted, and was just browsing options while I waited for Newegg to get it in stock. But if the email had been a bit more direct and assertive, I might have pulled the trigger right then. ("Hey, we noticed you were looking at cheap point and shoots, here's our one top seller, and the three most recommended reviews for it. Oh, and hey, if you buy now, we'll give you free shipping or a cheapo card or whatever.")
Confidence counts for a lot. My friends come up to me when they buy computer equipment because they know I'll weigh their likely use cases against my own personal preferences, ask a few questions, and then give them a link to exactly the product I think they should buy. Knowledge is important, but tailored knowledge is invaluable.
To continue with the Newegg example--instead of presenting me with a few dozen options when I click on video cards, maybe it would be more pleasing if they looked at my buying history, noticed I generally only buy cheap, last gen nVidia stuff, and make sure my first four items fit that general profile. And then maybe one more row with outliers--slightly more expensive cards or an ATI card. Partner up with a content provider and add a link if that particular card was featured in, say, an AnandTech system build. Link to the 50 page forum post about that case on HardOCP.
I challenge anyone here to try buying electronics like the average person does. Go out to Best Buy and buy the headphones "the guy" recommends. Then go home, use them, read some reviews on one of the bigger boards, and try NOT to feel like an idiot who just wasted at least some of his money. Until you invest either a lot of time learning or a lot of money experimenting, you won't know what you prefer. You won't even know what questions to ask to narrow down your options.
And that's the feeling Rands is trying to avoid with his future shaving cream purchase.
I have yet to see a truly personalized experience that finds me that one esoteric object that I'd never heard of, but desperately need.
I'm always stunned by how poor Amazon & EBAY's reccomendation engines are, and how infrequently they suggest anything I want or am compelled by.
What start-ups are playing in this space and building something compelling?