Greg Linden

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Greg Linden
Make Data Useful
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• Help people find and discover anything they
  want to buy online
• - Jeff Bezos

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• Help people find and discover anything online

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• Encourage experimentation ... as much of it as
  possible
• - Jeff Bezos

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• What is the goal?

Clicks
Visitors
Revenue
Retention
Traffic
Time on site
Customer acquisition
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• Measure
• Learn
• Optimize
• Iterate

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• Worry about the data first before you worry
  about the algorithm
• - Peter Norvig

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Banko and Brill, 2001
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• On the design of recommendation features

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• Design to encourage forgiveness of mistakes

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• Help when help is wanted

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• Discovery is when something wonderful that you
  didn't know existed, or didn't know how to ask
  for, finds you.
• - Fortune Magazine

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• Discovery of the new and surprising using the
  recent

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• Users really respond to speed.
• - Marissa Mayer

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• 500 ms -20 traffic
• _at_ Google
• 100 ms -1 sales
• _at_ Amazon

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• Speed matters!

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• Measure, then optimize toward a goal
• Big data first, then algorithms
• Encourage users to forgive you
• Help when help is wanted
• Surprise and focus on the new
• Speed matters