Week 1 Resource

'Reinforcing the Blockbuster Nature of Media': The Impact of Online Recommenders

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1818
Underlying research paper:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=955984

This week's news / resource is an article from the Warton Business School that reviews and comments on some recent research by members of the Warton staff.

The article, and supporting research, suggests that online retailers need to be careful when implementing a recommender system so that they don't continually recommend a short list of items that are supposed to be part of "the Long Tail" of their inventory. Instead of milking more profits from the "Tail" they will simple create more "Blockbuster" sales.

One little tangent in the article was of particular interest to me. Apparently, the whole recommender thing at Amazon was a real after thought. The developer of the original feature was contacted and claims that he was told to stop development of the feature because it would get in the way of a speedy checkout.