Collective Ignorance? (Paperback)

The use of recommendation systems has become widespread on the web - YouTube allow users to rate videos and Amazon provide user-written book reviews. But how reliable are these recommendation systems as a basis for making our choices? This book analyzes online recommendation systems from a critical point of view. Based on existing work within the field of social navigation, a compilation of the weaknesses found in rating systems and written reviews is presented. Four recommendation websites are then analyzed in relation to the compilation of known weaknesses. You might end up being very sceptical to the information online recommendation systems provide. If your academic work is related to human-computer interaction or if you are a system developer this book is for you. For the academic, this book will provide you with further insight into how social navigation might not always work as intended and into the weaknesses of social navigation. For the system developer, this book will tell you how to avoid the myriad of pitfalls found when building a recommendation system, thus enabling you to build a more reliable and valuable system for the user.