Netflix Movie Recommendations Bug

If you're not getting movie recommendations, you're not alone. Mike C. sent an e-mail to Netflix customer support and they acknowledged the problem:

I hadn't received any recommendations from Netflix for the past couple weeks so I wrote to customer service last night. Today, I received a reply and it sounds like I may not be alone. Are you aware of other Netflix users with the same problem?

Thanks, Mike C.

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From: customerservice@netflix.com
Subject: Re: Help with Your Account
Date: April 23, 2005 2:33:51am PDT

Thank you for contacting Netflix.com customer support!

We are aware of the problem you have brought to our attention. Our
technical team is currently working to resolve this issue. We
apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused, and hope to have
it resolved shortly.

We sincerely appreciate your patience and understanding.

Thanks,
Netflix Customer Service

Have you experienced problems with Netflix movie recommendations lately?

Comments

[Optimizer]

I have not received any "shooting star" recommendations for several months. I get the "people who liked these like this" type of recommendations, but not ones based on my ratings, viewed by clicking on the "Recommendations" tab. I've rated over 500 movies, continue to rate more, but it's always the same couple movies on that page ...

[Ian]

This isn't a new thing, but I get a lot of recommendations where people who rate like me give a movie a lower score than the average. It predicted I would give Godfather 3.8 stars when the site average is 4.5. I wouldn't call that a worthwhile recommendation.

[gritmonkey]

I just found a cool little research project at the University of Minnesota called Movielens [http://movielens.umn.edu/main]. It seems to work pretty well, can you can add a budy and get joint recomendations.

[Mike C.]

I had not heard of Movielens before... reminds me of Film Affinity. About a year ago, PC Magazine called Film Affinity one of the Top 100 Sites You Can't Live Without.

http://www.filmaffinity.com/en/main.html

Here's PC Magazine's description: "Is your Netflix queue empty? Bypass that site's mediocre recommendations engine and head over to FilmAffinity. Take the movie tour, then rate a bunch of films, and within a few minutes you'll have a handful of like-minded "movie soulmates" whose ratings can help you suss out what to watch next."

[Kate]

Here's another great source of movie recommendations:

http://www.sourcelight.com/discover/login.php

Rate movies, get recommendations based on what you tell it you like.

I have 3 queues; one for me, one for my son & one for the rest of the family. My son rents anime under his profile but under my profile ALL I get are anime recommendations! I have never rented anime under my profile! It seems they use his profile for my recommendations.