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Amazon uses "collaborative filtering" or "social filtering" to
identify/recommend relevant books. The idea is that customers who have
bought the same book are likely to have similar preferences for other books
as well. To be reliable collaborative filtering system needs a very large
number of people (in thousands, and Amazon definitely has plenty of
customers) to express their preferences (in this case, by buying) about a
sizeable number of options (in this case, different books).
The system doesn't know (no cares) about buyer's reasons for purchasing the
book. It relies on laws of averages.
Irene Polikoff
Executive Partner
TopQuadrant
Main office: 724-846-9300x212
Direct line: 914-777-0888
Cell: 914-329-8576
www.topquadrant.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Betty Harvey [mailto:harvey@eccnet.com]
Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2003 11:16 PM
To: Ian Graham
Cc: Simon St.Laurent; xml-dev@lists.xml.org
Subject: Re: [xml-dev] Re: xml, books
On Wed, 15 Oct 2003, Ian Graham wrote:
>
> On Wed, 15 Oct 2003, Simon St.Laurent wrote:
>
> > igraham@ic-unix.ic.utoronto.ca (Ian Graham) writes:
> > >Is there any data explaining 'why' people by technical (e.g. XML)
> > >books?
> >
> > The main theories are that people buy books:
> >
> > * Because they NEED them to solve an immediate problem
>
> Theories are good, but data is better. For example, has anyone
> (O'Reilly or others) surveyed purchasers -- or prospetive purchasers -- to
find out
> what they are looking for?
I think that it would be difficult for O'Reilly (or any other publisher) to
provide this information because they usually don't interface with the end
customer. They sell books through retailers. Companies, such as Borders,
don't gaither that information. I have lots of O'Reilly books and don't
remember a single time that I have interfaced with them.
However, I assume that Amazon has developed a 'KM nee AI' system that tracks
the buying trends of individuals and maybe even groups of individuals and
buying trends.
When you buy a book from Amazon before you check out they have a screen that
says something to the effect "Customers who have bought "Foo" also bought
"Foo+" to give you one last chance to add to your order. The last book I
bought from Amazon was an XSLT book (XSLT & XPath by John Gardner and
Zarella Rendon) and I noticed that I was prompted that other customers had
bought other XSLT books - I remember thinking that I would like to know who
those other cusomters were because I value the opinions of my peers more
than Amazon. The interesting thing was the books that were referenced were
XSLT books that I would consider the most popular and the best (there are 39
books on XSLT available on Amazon and I think 3 were referenced).
Betty
>
> I agree in principle with many of your epotential explanations, but
> I'd sure like to see some real data.
>
> Ian
>
>
>
>
>
>
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--
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Betty Harvey | Phone: 410-787-9200 FAX: 9830
Electronic Commerce Connection, Inc. |
harvey@eccnet.com | Washington,DC XML Users Grp
URL: http://www.eccnet.com | http://www.eccnet.com/xmlug
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