Napoleon Dynamite outed as culprit for bad Netflix picks

Netflix’s lifeblood comes from the movies it recommends, a gesture of exclusivity that supplies less-known titles based on user ratings. Through Cinematch, which analyzes viewers’ individual ratings and trends, Netflix generates new suggestions and uses them to keep queues full and customers committed.

But the system has remained scattershot, prone to ham-fisted recommendations from computers that can’t consider human factors. In response, Netflix launched a $1 million contest to any person or team that can improve the system by at least 10 percent, and there are now several hopefuls that have stalled with less than 1 percent to go—largely, some say, because of Napoleon Dynamite.

According to a new piece in The New York Times Magazine, the 2004 comedy, a phenomenon for some and an inescapable plague for others, has proven such a divisive movie that competitors for the Netflix prize have traced a large part of the error in their calculations back to it. Movies like I Heart Huckabees, Lost in Translation and The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou have demonstrated similar effects, but none like Napoelon Dynamite, which one user said accounted for as much as 15 percent of his error rate.

The closest team vying for the Netflix money is stuck at 9.44 percent. Napoleon, meanwhile, just polished off a whole new set of haters.

Related links:
News: Netflix brings 12,000 movies and shows to TiVo users
News: Netflix deal with Starz adds 1,000 movies to Watch Instantly
NetflixPrize.com

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