Every time I send DVDs back to Netflix (which is a great service, BTW), they e-mail me to say something like "We've received $some_movie, rate it today!" They're trying to get me to rate it so that they can better recommend movies in the future.
This isn't new. Amazon has been using customer product ratings and purchase behavior for a long time, and they're done quite a good job at at. The rating takes me about 10 seconds. But for some reason I can't seem to bring myself to bother rating Netflix movies. And I'm not really sure why.
I guess I feel like it really won't matter. I rarely browse Netflix in the way that I do on Amazon. When I go to Netflix, I usually know what I'm looking for.
Am I the only one? Do my fellow Netflix subscribers actually rate all their flix?
It's interesting to note that I only fill out the Yahoo! Shopping merchant ratings about half the time too, but for different reasons. I have a half-written "Why I shop on Amazon instead of Yahoo" entry that I haven't managed to finish yet. But hey, it's only been 2 months. :-)
Posted by jzawodn at August 05, 2003 01:36 PM
I did until i hit like 140 movies rated and realized that it really wasn't helping lol. Now I just use IMDB click links to actors/actresses I like, and that sorta thing.
I wouldn't bother rating movies on Netflix. I currently have 491 movies rated and Netflix only provides 3 or 4 recommendations in each genre before giving me a message such as "We can't find any more Action & Adventure recommendations for you. To get more recommendations, rate more movies you've seen.
". As I rate more movies I seem to get less recommendations.
I've got 697 movies currently rated. From that, Netflix gave me three recommendations. Don't waste your time.
Well, I've rated 933 so far, and who knows, maybe these movies it's recommending to me really are films that I would love, but they all look stupid and I don't feel like renting any of them. Bride with White Hair 2?? What the hell is that? Then I see something like, I dunno, High Noon, and it totally blows me away and I wonder, why the hell didn't Netflix recommend this?
i rate them. why not? it takes like 2 seconds to click those stars.
I rate them for a different reason -- to keep track of what I've watched. I don;t seem to be able to remember bad movie titles, so before netflix, I'd rent some crap movie >1 time. As I've rated more movies, (up to 700 now) I believe my recommendations have gotten worse -- I'd bet the engine is designed for ~30-50 ratings.
Wow, what hard core movie watchers...I have only 257 ranked and I often ignore the e-mails but I rate religiously as I am browsing. I think my rating comes down to how nice and easy they made the UI. It is dead simple, obvious when you have and haven't rated something and its painless (esp. since it doesn't jump you to another page). I think we all would rate less if there was full page refresh for each rating.
I've rated a buttload of movies, and been introduced to some decent movies for my trouble.
