I’ll be the first to admit that I read books based on friend recommendations, not Amazon’s recommendations.
So when I read this:
But there may be a hope for aspiring writers, yet. Social networking is bringing the gatekeeper – the human recommendation – back to the forefront of culture consumption, and new models are cropping up to try and take advantage of this recent shift in online behavior.
With Facebook, Goodreads, and a host of newer sites designed to connect authors and musicians with their potential audiences, the pendulum has already started swinging back towards human intelligence and curated search, rather than artificial intelligence and ‘recommendation engines.’ People are becoming less interested in what a computer thinks they should like and more interested in what their friends recommend. If this sounds familiar, it means you’re probably old enough to remember going to a local record store and asking the owner to recommend you something good.
It made perfect sense to me. When someone posts or tells me about a good read and their recommendation has been spot on in the past, I am going to take them at their word and read!