[htrp]

> Then there is the personalization. The fact that there is a meme about spending more time browsing the Netflix catalog than watching content tells you everything you need to know about how little people trust Netflix recommendations. Their new "top 10" feature is just depressing most of the time. It looks like a list of ten random DVDs in the bargain bin near the Walmart checkout line.

They may also be optimizing for revenues as opposed to recommendation quality (homegrown content being cheaper than licensed)

[naravara]

Part of this might just be account switching issues though. If I’m watching for myself I can usually find what I want quickly. The problem comes when I’m trying to browse with my wife to find something we can both live with. At best it gives the my preferences and the Union of me + wife’s preferences (and vice versa on her account.) But what we’d really want is a separate recommendation feed that shows the intercept of me + wife’s preferences.

But most people are lazy and won’t account switch for different contexts like that anyway, so there’s just no way they can keep the profile data as clean as it needs to be for a television.