Netflix hands out big bucks to improve recommendations system

There's no doubt that Netflix is always toiling away in an attempt to improve its online rental service, but rather than tasking its own whiz-kids to do the impossible, it has established a potential $1 million prize for any individual or team who can "improve upon the complex Netflix movie recommendation system by 10-percent." The second annual competition just concluded, and for the second straight year there was no million dollar winner. Instead, BellKor in BigChaos took home $50,000 with a 9.44% improvement. According to team member Dr. Hunt, "hitting that last [small bit] is less of a dash to the finish line and more of a tough slog to the peak of Mt. Everest." Kind of makes you wonder, though -- what else is going on behind Netflix's doors?

[Thanks, Seth]

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 11th 2008 7:25PM]

.56% cost the guy $950K?!?

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 11th 2008 8:23PM]

Seriously! Can he have a look at the numbers or data to check for any janky number crunching?

Was this a case of .56% costing him $950k or .56% SAVING them $950k?

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 11th 2008 9:10PM]

The people competing are already aware of how they stack up. There are no surprises as anyone can view how they are doing. Netflix has clearly shown what constitutes improvement and teams can do the math themselves to see their improvement
http://www.netflixprize.com/leaderboard

[jason202 Posted Dec 12th 2008 8:55AM]

I seem to recall reading that the USPS was forcing them to replace their envelopes with something compatible with Postal Service machinery. Whatever happened to that?

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 12th 2008 10:01AM]

Those "whiz-kids" must still be working on the instant streaming to the Xbox360. Tried it again last night and still only one bar.

Kudos to Netflix when I called them though. The tech had me try several different things and was very professional during the call. Can't complain too loud, since the instant streaming is free.

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 14th 2008 1:40AM]

10%? I can double the performance of NetFlix's recommendations and I will do it for free.

It's simple: Allow secondary accounts to access the NetFlix video on demand service. Currently secondary accounts have to log onto the primary account to watch video on demand. This means that the viewing preferences of the entire family get moshed together into one big mess. My wife now keeps getting recommendations for animaes which she hates because that's what I like to watch. NetFlix does not even keep the on demand preferences separate from the DVD by mail service so the whole thing is a huge mess.

Remember when NetFlix was going to get rid of secondary accounts entirely and it was rightly pointed out that this would make a total joke out of their precious movie recomendations? The same is has been happening with their video on demand service since it was first introduced.