I’ve been following the Netflix Prize for years. This is the contest that gives all comers a chance to try and beat the formidable Cinematch algorithm that Netflix uses to give customers highly targeted recommendations. According to a recent email, Netflix may be preparing to announce the disqualification of the leading team “BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos” who submitted results that beats Cinematch by the contest’s goal of 10%.
I joined Twitter a little over a year ago and have been learning how to be a good twitizen ever since. I would follow people that were interesting or who were talking about topics that interested me. When I first joined, it seemed to be populated mainly with real people but as time passed I started seeing twitter accounts that were automated. I would follow someone and within seconds or minutes I received a direct message thanking me for following them. I know that Twitter has an API but I couldn’t imagine that everyone I was receiving the direct messages from knew how to do that.