Preference Engines - Danger and Opportunity

Recently, I placed an item on [craigslist.com->http://www.craigslist.com] in an attempt to sell it. A beautiful set of Russian nesting dolls that I know are worth far more than the $35 I listed as the asking price. Recalling, albeit vaguely, the Russian word for these dolls, I searched Google for ‘marushka’ and sure enough several pages of results appeared listing marushka Russian nesting dolls.

Today I received an email from someone who was kind enough to inform me that the dolls are in fact ‘matreshka’ dolls. While emailing my thanks I realized that this situation serves to illustrate how Web2.U is distinct from Web2.0. If you’re as yet unfamiliar with the basic concepts of Web2.U, I direct your attention to the following: [From Web2.0 to Web2.U->web20-web2u], [Why Web2.0 Must Go->web20-must-go], [Web2.U - A Standard->web2u-standard], and [Cooperative Computing->cooperative-computing].

Keywords Preference Engines - There’s been a great deal of emphasis and progress in the development of preference engines. Sites such as netflix, rhapsody and amazon use preference engines to make product suggestions to consumers. Google uses a preference engine to suggest keywords which one might have misspelled. Isn’t this Web2.U? Isn’t this pointing the User towards information that the User might find meaningful or useful? Not necessarily.

The Idea - Preference engines are founded upon the idea of ‘collective preferences’. More specifically, if a user demonstrates a liking for several items while other users who like the same items also tend to like an additional item for which the user has expressed no opinion, then the chances are the user will also like the additional item.