Hey again, Tumblr.
Here’s the exciting conclusion of my research project. Now that I know why people Like stuff on Tumblr, I’ve been able to build a recommendation system that I think is a little smarter than most.
Most recommendation sites just look at what you Like. However, we Like things for all sorts of reasons. Should Liking something because it made you laugh contribute the same amount to recommendations as Liking something because you agreed with it? I don’t think so.
My site asks you a few questions about why you’ve clicked that Like button, and takes that into account when it gives you some suh-weet recommendations.
Why We Like only gets better as more people use it. So, if you’d like, find some new new people to follow and tell me whether they’re any good (providing feedback is at the end of the recommendation process).
You get some cool new people to follow, and I get some more data for my thesis — everybody wins!
Please feed Scott’s computer more data. It recommended Fuck Yeah Wedding Ideas, so this thesis still has a ways to go before it is proven. (That’s what a thesis does, right?)
