Log on to your Facebook page, look at the column on the right, and you will see ads that seem uniquely relevant to you. Same for me: My page has an ad directing me to a site where I can check in on a particular high school graduating class from 1983. Why 1983? Because that’s when I graduated. How does Facebook know this? Because I told it. Below that ad is one for Gordon Ramsay’s Los Angeles restaurant. Why? Because Facebook knows that I live in the same zip code the restaurant is in—and, again, it knows this because I told it. Facebook is an advertising powerhouse not because it has a standard formula for great ads, but because at the start it asks, “Who are you?” Then, guided by its understanding of your likes and dislikes, it delivers ads tailored to your profile.
Netflix does the same thing. Before you stream a movie, the website gives you a “movie quiz,” asking if you’ve seen various films and how you’d rate each one. On the basis of the results, it suggests only those movies that align with your past preferences. Even the venerable New York Times delivers different news to you than to others. If you have a digital subscription, part of what you see online is a list of articles from a recommendation engine that’s powered by a record of which articles you have clicked on in the past, along with which articles your friends have clicked on.
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