Few words about recommender systems

This weeks lecture mentioned recommender systems and I thought I'd share little of my experiences with them and how I use them. Lecture and many of the courses blog posts mention amazon.com as an example of site using recommender systems, but I think I'll talk about bookdepository.com as I've used it more. (And also because it's an excellent internet book store. Cheaper comics than here in Finland and books in english too.)

Often when I'm going to the store I'm looking for next book in a series.I may not remember the exact title, but I do know the name of the previous book. So I type the name of the previous book into the search field and hit search. This is the part where recommender systems come in. Usually what I'm looking for shows up in a box showing "Other people who viewed this bought"-items.

So I use recommender systems as a kind of extention to search. Impulse buying is other way of using them that comes to mind, but I usually leave that to actual stores. Internet stores just don't produce that impulse to buy something on a whim, when you just see the product but can't touch or examine it.