Netflix
Netflix separates recommendations by category, whether that is by type (show/movie), structure (30 minute laughs), or genre. But beyond these, they also have several different personalized categories: “We Think You’ll Love These” “Your Next Watch” “Because you watched xxx”, alongside the ones shown below.
It’s interesting to me that there are several categories that are dedicated to the personalized categories. Its honestly unclear why there should be a difference between “Gems for You” and “We Think You’ll Love These”. It shows how dedicated Netflix is to personalization. This makes sense, as I feel that Netflix helps us find new shows/movies. The categories help us decide where to look.
YouTube
Youtube also has recommendations but there isn’t any separation. Because Youtube videos are shorter form and there’s no real progression (unlike a season of a show), selecting a video is less commitment. This relieves pressure on the recommendation algorithm, because people can just switch around or exit a video without much resentment. I feel like Youtube tends to be a browsing platform, the more variety there is the more things you can dabble around with!
Airbnb
Airbnb is pretty useless unless you filter. You come into Airbnb with a baseline “rubric” of things, and you just need to find a listing that matches what you want. Since finding a place to stay is a big commitment, it can be very exhausting to find the perfect listing even with all the filtering. This differs from Netflix and Youtube since shows/movies/videos only have a few set features (genre, length, etc.); you just either like it or you don’t. I did notice though, that there are filter recommendations in Airbnb now! I think this is a nice feature to support filtering since that “rubric” can be hard to determine too.
