Comments on: The Friendly Shopkeeper Advertising Model

By: William

William — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 18:00:05 +0000

Just make sure that your relevance engine also includes a feature prohibiting it from making suggestions for things I haven’t asked for and you’ll be all set. And I don’t mean specific items, I mean stuff at all. So, when I ask for its recommendations on, say, music or clothes or vacation destinations then it should spit out perfectly tailored selections. But if I haven’t asked for anything, I don’t want to see anything but the email from my friends – no ads, no popups, no spam – nothing.

By: James

James — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 05:30:50 +0000

Hi Brendon, I think we need to continue the conversation we had the other day about AdHack. From the tone and content of your post, it seems we’re thinking along intersecting roads, although the angle I’m pursuing is far more social and less algorithmic.

I think that, just like the friendly shopkeeper, people make the best relevance engines. The problem I think we’re trying to address is how to make it fun / simple / interesting / rewarding to recommend. Oh, and scalable. And then how to make the relationship work for all interested parties.

By: Roland Tanglao

Roland Tanglao — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 22:13:57 +0000

+1 on “relevance engine”

By: Brendon J. Wilson

Brendon J. Wilson — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 00:36:03 +0000

Ian Bell has posted a more complete examination of the need for the Friendly Shopkeeper model and its relationship to relevance engines.

Hmm – I like the name “relevance engine”. It acts in not-so-subtle counterpoint to the term “search engines”. Nobody wants a “search engine” – they want a “find engine”.