Collective Ignorance?

The use of recommendation systems has becomewidespread on the web - YouTube allow users to ratevideos and Amazon provide user-written book reviews.But how reliable are these recommendation systems asa basis for making our choices?This book analyzes online recommendation systems froma critical point of view. Based on existing workwithin the field of social navigation, a compilationof the weaknesses found in rating systems and writtenreviews is presented. Four recommendation websitesare then analyzed in relation to the compilation ofknown weaknesses.You might end up being very sceptical to theinformation online recommendation systems provide.If your academic work is related to human-computerinteraction or if you are a system developer thisbook is for you. For the academic, this book willprovide you with further insight into how socialnavigation might not always work as intended and intothe weaknesses of social navigation. For the systemdeveloper, this book will tell you how to avoid themyriad of pitfalls found when building arecommendation system, thus enabling you to build amore reliable and valuable system for the user.