Pet Peeve: The hovering saleslady or the saleslady who follows your every move despite giving her the obvious yet polite brush-off with your I’m-just-looking smile.Funny enough, recommendation engines which in effect perform the same services as the hovering saleslady is probably my favorite online shopping/browsing tool. It’s better than a shopping buddy because it recommends items based on your preferences from the data the website has gathered from your browsing history. You’ve probably used them in Amazon and YouTube. In today’s market where we are barraged with choices left and right, recommendation engines are just the tools necessary to navigate our way through the chaos. I read an interesting article in Time which warns us however of the risk of recommendation engines: that it keeps you in a rut, confining you to the same field of interest you started in. But that is the point isn’t it, to limit your options and box you into a category thereby guaranteeing that you enjoy whatever is recommended to you? There’s no denying that recommendation engines are the new hovering salesladies, only better.
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