Netflix has announced a “Stream Up” event in San Diego on August 26, inviting its users to “…check out some of their favorite films and maybe even make a love connection based on their cinematic tastes.” Could this mean they are getting into the dating business?
Why not? Netflix has invested millions of dollars into their movie-matching engine, helping customers find movies they’ll love. That same technology used to guess what you’ll rate a movie you haven’t seen could just as easily be applied to matchmaking.
Dating sites like Match.com and eHarmony.com have their own algorithms for helping their users find the perfect mate. Such matching algorithms require you to fill out long questionnaires about your values, interests and tastes and use that as a basis for matching you up with Mr. or Mrs. Right.
Such systems are far from perfect and, in my single days, I tried out such services with little success. But using movies as a basis for mating customers is intriguing, to say the least.
Ayn Rand defined art as “a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical value-judgments…. [B]y means of a selective re-creation, [art] concretizes man’s fundamental view of himself and of existence. It tells man, in effect, which aspects of his experience are to be regarded as essential, significant, important.” (From “Art and Cognition” in The Romantic Manifesto)
The beauty of using art (and in this case, movies) is that you get at a person’s fundamental view of the world, and matching two similar approaches to life is a recipe for romantic success.
Because we’re talking about one’s reaction to art, you get at issues of one’s personality that are nearly impossible to quantify in a typical questionnaire—issues such as sense of humor, one’s implicit sense of life and implicit philosophy. Matching people by their taste in movies skips the step of need to make explicit one’s philosophy and sense of life on a system like Match.com, which many have difficulty articulating even their own minds.
Taste in movies can’t measure things like physical attraction (which is important in any romantic relationship, and what profile pictures are for). But like all dating and matching services, these are tools, a mere starting off point to help narrow the playing field and increase one’s chances of finding their soul mate.
Whether Netflix decides to enter the dating business is to be seen. But their movie matching engine is an untapped asset in the field of relationship matching. If they don’t pursue creating such a service (or license their technology for someone else to do it), I hope someone else will create such a service. I would definitely use it—if I wasn’t already married.
Foursquare made popular the concept of the “check in,” where individuals “check in” to locations as they travel about town, earning points and badges while they do it. It is both social networking and social gaming, and it’s fun.
On this front, I’ve recently become addicted to Barcode Hero for the iPhone, a new app from Kima Labs and founded by a couple of friends of mine, Blake Scholl and Jason Crawford. These are smart guys and the first version of their app is all the proof you’ll need to see they are seasoned pros.
Barcode Hero brings a new innovation to the “check in” world, applying it—not to places—but to things. You can scan anything that has a standard barcode with your iPhone camera, whether it be things you own in your home to items at the store, and share it with your friends. From Best Buy to the supermarket, Barcode Hero will likely have it in their database, and you earn points for scanning items, marking them as “owned” or writing reviews or comments on the items you’ve scanned and share them with your friends.
If you have the most points in a given category, you will be deemed the “King” or “Queen” of that category. Since I started using the app very early on, I quickly became the “King” of sheet music, DVDs, books, Objectivism (from scanning all my Ayn Rand related literature), among many others. I’ve been dethroned in several of these categories since, a good sign the app is rapidly acquiring new users.
In addition to this, you can follow your friends like on any social network, and see what they’re scanning and buying. It’s also much more useful than Foursquare, as when you scan something you can instantly see where you can purchase the product online from a variety of major online vendors.
It does require an iPhone, though a Droid version is planned, according to their Web site, as well as a Facebook account to log in (hopefully they will allow non-Facebook users to use the app in the future as well). Also lacking is a fully integrated Web presence, but I’m sure this is on the way. The few bugs I found at launch have been quickly remedied, and it feels like a solid and mature app.
Unlike many other social media apps, this one has a clear practical application: scan a bar code and instantly connect you to online vendors for the best deal. That means it has a solid business model out of the gate, a very promising sign for this new startup.
I wish Blake, Jason and all those involved with Kima Labs much success and am happy to see such a solid concept so well executed in the growing social media space. It’s a winner.
A recent article in The Financial Times titled “Net Neutrality Comes Back to Haunt Google” demonstrates why Google should stand on principle in its business practices and should give one pause in advocating Net Neutrality.
Many in the tech industry advocate Net Neutrality, which is the idea that all traffic transferred over the Internet should be treated equally with all other traffic. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) such as Comcast, AT&T and Time Warner are most people’s conduits to the Internet. Net Neutrality would force ISPs from throttling or prioritizing traffic through their networks. For example, some ISPs have slowed down or blocked certain types of traffic (or even prioritized other types of traffic), such as heavy users or traffic transferred by certain applications such as those involved in illegal file sharing or voice over IP data transferred by applications like Skype.
Before you jump in and say whether that’s good or bad for customers, consider that these companies own these networks and as such, it is their right to set the terms for their service. If customers do not receive the quality or quantity of service they want, they are free to select another provider (or no provider). They do not have the right to dictate how ISPs must run their service.
Google has advocated Net Neutrality, according to the article, because they believe the lack of Net Neutrality will hurt their business. But now they are under fire on a new front but up against the very principle they have been advocating. Some now want to regulate search results on the Internet, and dictate how Google must rank their search results.
Why? Google has “too much power,” the argument goes, with respect to sending traffic to sites on the Web. They determine who gets placed and how high up Web sites are shown in search results. A small change in search engine positioning can make or break a business, and an entire industry has been borne around search engine optimization (SEO) by businesses in order to exploit the value Google has created for Web publishers.
But it is Google that has created the value of search in the first place, and to dictate how they must run their business is a violation of their rights and an attempt to expropriate the value they did not earn by that which they did not create.
Google commands such “power” because it has won customers over in terms of the value of their search engine. From recipes to song lyrics to news articles to photographs, Google will help you find the most relevant content on the Web in the most convenient way possible to you. That is their purpose and that is the core of their business, and they have won customers over by being the best at it and, as a result, earned the position of the dominant player in the market.
But to force Google to modify their search results by force will destroy this value, and that is exactly what proponents of “Search Neutrality” desire. They want to make Google give results to customers according to their standards and whims, and determine how search should be optimized, not by the free choice of customers (such as by creating a competing search engine that is better than Google that customers want to use), but at the point of a gun. How did Google gain the dominant position in the marketplace? Blank out. They just are, and they want a piece of it–a piece they did not earn and cannot win legitimately.
That same threat is currently being faced by ISPs by telling them how they must run their business. Google had better wise up to the principle involved here and defend ISPs rights and oppose Net Neutrality, or they won’t have a moral foundation to stand on when regulators come after them as their next target.
Much hoopla is being made in the media about Google’s so-called “snooping” on wireless networks (Wi-Fi) in various countries, with government agencies calling for investigations into Google, and grabs at more power by “enhancing” so-called privacy laws.
For some background, Google drives around the country in vehicles on public roads and snaps pictures of the roads and surrounding buildings and identifies Wi-Fi locations that extend out to the roads. It uses the images for its Google Maps application and the Wi-Fi location in its services to quickly and automatically identify a customer’s location (such as in an application used for directions or displaying a map). (As an aside, Apple has a similar feature built into its iPhone and iTouch devices.)
In order to identify the wireless router, Google scans the data it is transmitting. But it can only read data being transmitted on non-secure, i.e., fully open to the public, networks.
Earlier this year, Google discovered and then disclosed that it had inadvertently stored the data being transmitted over these open, non-secure, non-password protected Wi-Fi networks. Google asserts that it never used any of this collected data in any of its products, and it fully intends to destroy the data. The only reason they have not done so already is due to various regulations, as they must dispose of the data legally, navigating myriad laws in dozens of countries in which this occurred.
Many in the media, tech industry, so-called privacy advocates, and now several government agencies (foreign and domestic) are investigating the matter, shouting bloody murder and pointing fingers at Google for “violating” people’s privacy.
This is absurd. Google collected data from public networks, i.e., wireless networks that individuals chose not to secure and, further, from computers that individuals also chose not to secure, which transmitted its data over a wireless network which they also knew (or should have known) was not secure. Securing a wireless router or network is a relatively simple task, and given that wireless signals can and do easily transmit beyond the person or company’s property, it is up to those that own a wireless router to secure their network, if they so desire.
If private, confidential data was transmitted over these unsecured networks, the primary finger of blame should be pointed at the person transmitting private data over an usecured network, not the person picking it up.
That does not stop the media and various groups and government from making sensationalist claims that Google “snatched passwords” and “private e-mail message.” While this may be factually correct, it is dishonest and misleading.
The “snatched passwords” and “private e-mail messages” were transmitted, unsecured, over an unsecured, public network (yes, both the network AND the computer that does the transmitting were not secured—a double whammy—and, yes, it is possible to transmit these things securely—even over an unsecured network—if you set up your e-mail and other applications on your computer to do just that. For example, any data transmitted to a URL starting with https:// —often used on Web sites when entering credit card information—is deemed secure even if you visit that site on a non-secure Wi-Fi network).
Some may argue that, just because one may leave the front door to one’s house unlocked—and wide open—doesn’t mean you have a right to enter the house and take what’s inside. But the metaphor is not quite accurate; it is more like someone left all their furniture on the sidewalk. That still does not mean, the argument may continue, that you have a right to take the furniture, since you don’t know whether it is intended to be given away (maybe the homeowner is simply replacing his carpets that day, and doesn’t want to damage his landscaping, or is in the process of moving).
Of course, the metaphor does not apply here exactly, as Google collected copies of people’s data. But it did not “steal” or “snoop” on people’s “private” data. It looked at it, while it was there, out in the open, in plain, clear view. Nor is Google exploiting the data, using it to blackmail people who accidentally did not secure their wireless networks and computers, or is otherwise exploiting the data (which would be wrong). They did not want it in the first place, and now want to throw it away. In other words, they have not harmed anyone in any way whatsoever.
As a property owner, you have a right to set the terms for the use of your property. When it comes to wireless networks, you do this by setting a password on your Wi-Fi router—or not—depending on your purpose. It is up to the owner of the wireless network to determine, and it is his responsibility to do so.
In short, Google did not violate anyone’s privacy, and it did not harm or violate anyone’s rights. Further, they should be praised for being transparent about the issue, and about their intended use (or, in this case, destruction) of the collected data. Morally, they did not have to announce this—just deleting the data would have been fine—and probably had to do so because of regulations in various countries (which has caused them undeserved scathing from the media, and likely expensive legal fees navigating the matter).
If anything, we should be alarmed at those advocating further government regulations or that Google hand over the collected data to anyone. And, we should all be taking responsibility for securing our privacy for those things which we wish to keep private.
Reasonable measures can and should be taken by any person transmitting data, especially over wireless networks. And these measures are nearly as simple as closing your front door (let alone locking it) and make clear your intentions with regard to your privacy.
If your Netflix queue is well over 100 movies, it could take a year or longer before that just-added title arrives in your mailbox. This creates the problem of having to remember the reason you wanted to watch something. How many times have you opened that red envelope only to discover a movie you’ve never heard of and have no interest in seeing? It’s time to put and end to these situations.
Adding an option where you can attach a note to each item in your queue would remind you why you put it there in the first place. When you get that e-mail telling you such-and-such a movie has just been mailed, it will include your note. You could write anything you want in there, such as:
“Don said this was good, call him after and discuss fight sequence.”
—Following up with friends is always a value.
“Movie torturous, hilarious with Rifftrax.”
—Don’t forget about it later when it finally arrives.
“Wife wanted this one.”
—Time to schedule a night in and prepare the snacks.
“Jessica Biel. 1 hour, 3 minutes, 15 seconds.”
—Are you beginning to see the value here?
Hopefully Netflix will add Facebook and Twitter integration soon, too. The notes feature would work well here. I might tweet: “Just added ‘Talk of the Town’ to my #Netflix queue as part of my legal-themed movies marathon.” Please, Netflix, allow us to attach little notes to the movies in our queues. It will make using your service that much more valuable, useful and rewarding.