When we are searching for a new book or a movie, the first thing we do is call up friends. And not just any friend, we call those people whose choice is very similar to ours. Smatchy.com tries to capture this same idea in the form of a recommendation engine.
With smatchy.com, a user has to answer a set of questions, based on which other smatchy users, whose answers match those of the user, are calculated. The results of this calculation are used to power other features on the site, like providing movie & book recommendations.
Now this concept might not seem very innovative, and frankly speaking, people usually don’t like to be questioned a lot. But smatchy.com negotiates this stigma by making the whole question-answer process fun!
Firstly, the questions are anything but typical. Some of the questions I had to answer were:
I would like to own a Lexus
I don’t mind being licked by dogs
Linear algebra is fun
I think people need to be aggressive if they want to survive in the workplace.
I like taking risks.
All religions have equal worth
I love coffee
I care too much about what other people think.
I like to IM my friends all the time.
I like the book 'da vinci code'
The question set is a mix of fun, whacky and sometime totally serious questions. This makes the process of answering the questions really addictive. Partly because you want to see more of these weird questions (‘I would rather have a root canal than live in Texas’??!!!), and partly because u want to know what other people think about those same questions.
Answering the questions is also fun. There are 2 scales on which u rate every question, which is quite different from the traditional thumbs up/down or ranking approach. One scale is the agreement scale, using which u can use to express your answer (on a scale of 1-7). The second scale is used to reflect how ‘good’ a question is. These 2 scales are combined into a grid-like system.
After you answer a question, the system throws up a statistic which states the total number of people who responded to that question, and their response on a scale of 1-7, and where u stand with respect to other peoples opinion.
Recommendations:
Firstly, the smatches. Smatchy.com based on your responses, finds people who think like you do. These matches to your profile are called smatches. So each smatch is a smatchy.com user who has answered the questions you have, and their responses match your responses. Not only can u see a lit of all the smatches, but you can also see the degree to which your profile matches that of each of your smatch (percentage). You can also choose how smathcy.com finds these smatches. There are 14 different categories to choose from (books, movies, attitude, love!!!). You can also filter the smatches based on how ‘similar’ they are to you.
Now using the profiles of all these smatches, the system calculates movies and books that you may like. I have yet to get any recommendations, but from what I have read about the system in other blogs, these recommendations are pretty decent.
There are some other features too, like making up your own questions, sending messages to other people etc.
Working:
We can only guess how this system works, as the site does not provide any documentation on how they derive their recommendations. It looks like a collaborative recommendation engine, which does a user-to-user profile match based on the questions they answer.
Another intresting feature to analyze is the answer scale. Remember we have 2 scales to work with while answering every question. I believe the ‘good question’ scale is used by the system to calculate if users like to answer a particular question. Based on this, the system can refine its question set.
According to the owners of smatchy.com (MBA Graduates from Wharton), there is a complex algorithm behind the system (about which they don’t talk much, nor provide any documentation L ). I hope to find more information on the technical aspect of this system, which could provide me with the development of the movie recommender system I am currently building for my class project.
Links:
Home page: http://smatchy.com/ (login id: zarthos password: zarthos)
Article on smatchy.com: http://www.squidoo.com/recs
Smatchy Blog: http://blog.smatchy.com/
Smatchy.com FAQ: http://www.smatchy.com/home/help
With smatchy.com, a user has to answer a set of questions, based on which other smatchy users, whose answers match those of the user, are calculated. The results of this calculation are used to power other features on the site, like providing movie & book recommendations.Now this concept might not seem very innovative, and frankly speaking, people usually don’t like to be questioned a lot. But smatchy.com negotiates this stigma by making the whole question-answer process fun!
Firstly, the questions are anything but typical. Some of the questions I had to answer were:
I would like to own a Lexus
I don’t mind being licked by dogs
Linear algebra is fun
I think people need to be aggressive if they want to survive in the workplace.
I like taking risks.
All religions have equal worth
I love coffee
I care too much about what other people think.
I like to IM my friends all the time.
I like the book 'da vinci code'
The question set is a mix of fun, whacky and sometime totally serious questions. This makes the process of answering the questions really addictive. Partly because you want to see more of these weird questions (‘I would rather have a root canal than live in Texas’??!!!), and partly because u want to know what other people think about those same questions.
Answering the questions is also fun. There are 2 scales on which u rate every question, which is quite different from the traditional thumbs up/down or ranking approach. One scale is the agreement scale, using which u can use to express your answer (on a scale of 1-7). The second scale is used to reflect how ‘good’ a question is. These 2 scales are combined into a grid-like system.
After you answer a question, the system throws up a statistic which states the total number of people who responded to that question, and their response on a scale of 1-7, and where u stand with respect to other peoples opinion.
Recommendations:
Firstly, the smatches. Smatchy.com based on your responses, finds people who think like you do. These matches to your profile are called smatches. So each smatch is a smatchy.com user who has answered the questions you have, and their responses match your responses. Not only can u see a lit of all the smatches, but you can also see the degree to which your profile matches that of each of your smatch (percentage). You can also choose how smathcy.com finds these smatches. There are 14 different categories to choose from (books, movies, attitude, love!!!). You can also filter the smatches based on how ‘similar’ they are to you.
Now using the profiles of all these smatches, the system calculates movies and books that you may like. I have yet to get any recommendations, but from what I have read about the system in other blogs, these recommendations are pretty decent.
There are some other features too, like making up your own questions, sending messages to other people etc.
Working:
We can only guess how this system works, as the site does not provide any documentation on how they derive their recommendations. It looks like a collaborative recommendation engine, which does a user-to-user profile match based on the questions they answer.
Another intresting feature to analyze is the answer scale. Remember we have 2 scales to work with while answering every question. I believe the ‘good question’ scale is used by the system to calculate if users like to answer a particular question. Based on this, the system can refine its question set.
According to the owners of smatchy.com (MBA Graduates from Wharton), there is a complex algorithm behind the system (about which they don’t talk much, nor provide any documentation L ). I hope to find more information on the technical aspect of this system, which could provide me with the development of the movie recommender system I am currently building for my class project.
Links:
Home page: http://smatchy.com/ (login id: zarthos password: zarthos)
Article on smatchy.com: http://www.squidoo.com/recs
Smatchy Blog: http://blog.smatchy.com/
Smatchy.com FAQ: http://www.smatchy.com/home/help
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