Personalization algorithms are often helpful, but not without fail — buy a gift for a friend on Amazon and suddenly you feel like a stranger in your own account.
Qloo is an iOS app launched in November that believes better recommendations come from being more holistic. You add favorites across eight categories (movies, books, travel destinations, restaurants, etc.), each with subcategories, and the app makes cross-category recommendations. You can’t have more than five favorites per subcategory — an attempt to keep the app’s data high-quality. Your taste in music will influence your recommendations for brunch, and so on, creating a sort of Frankenstein monster of Foursquare, Netflix, Amazon and more.
See also: Man vs. Algorithm: When Media Companies Need a Human Touch
Personally, I found Taylor Swift’s RED album to be excellent post-breakup, but a book, being more immersive by nature, would be even better — so I asked Qloo to pull from its growing database the books liked by people who like Taylor Swift. My guess was that Jane Austen, with her complicated love stories, would be on there somewhere — and it was, Pride and Prejudice, at number 7.
Which books make you feel like you’re listening to a Taylor Swift song? Share in the comments.
Photo by Larry Busacca/TAS/Getty Images for TAS
Source:
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