Netflix Offers Million Dollar Bounty

If you’ve got some free time and programming skills, Netflix has a job for you… www.netflixprize.com.

Reuters says: Online DVD rental company Netflix Inc on Sunday announced that it would pay $1 million to the first person to develop software to improve the accuracy of Netflix’s movie recommendation system by 10 percent. Netflix’s Web-based recommendation system “learns” what kinds of films subscribers like by asking them to rate the films they watch. The system then recommends lists of similar titles, unique to each user.

Seattle Post says: The differences will be tracked by a program that quantifies how well the recommendation systems predict which movies will be liked or disliked by a profiled consumer.