RWW on Facebook's new recommendation engine
Facebook just announced the availability of a new feature for users creating accounts on the social network: Suggested Interests. Facebook will now recommend that new users sign up for updates from ("Like") publishers with high reader engagement and subscribed-to by people demographically similar to themselves. That's unique combination of factors that only Facebook could offer.
Getting users to enter metadata of any sort is difficult, which is why Google has always pursued models that rely on implicit metadata rather than getting too distracted by the explicit metadata (aka semantic web) route.
The alternative route to abandoning collecting explicit metadata is to figure out a UI that works, and a big enough incentive that people will use it.
Facebook is in a position to get users to actually give up details about themselves on a huge scale. And they're developing some very clever smarts to make it as easy as possible. A very powerful position to be in.
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