recommendations
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Sling TV adds personalized recommendations, starting on Apple TV
Sling TV is introducing an arguably overdue feature for insatiable viewers: personalized recommendations. As of January 17th, Apple TV users will receive custom-tailored suggestions for live and on-demand programs, whether it's a channel, a movie or a sports match. You can find it in the My TV section in a carousel alongside favorites.
Google Maps for iPhone now includes personalized recommendations
Earlier this year, Google redesigned Maps to add a bunch of features, including personalized suggestions based on your tastes and interests. Now, that feature will be more broadly available as Google is bringing the For You tab to iOS in more than 40 countries, and more than 130 additional nations on Android.
Twitter tests personalized 'unfollow' recommendations
Twitter works best when you have a perfectly-curated follower list. For many, it's an evolving process as their interests and opinions -- and those of the people they follow -- slowly change. For years, Twitter has recommended "Who to Follow," but as Slate reports, the company is also testing the reverse. That's right, some users are seeing prompts about accounts they might want to unfollow. As a spokesperson explained to Slate: "We know that people want a relevant Twitter timeline. One way to do this is by unfollowing people they don't engage with regularly." It was an "incredibly limited test," however, that may never be rolled out widely.
Google Maps' new Yelp-like features are now live
At the I/O developer conference last month, Google announced a bunch of new features for Maps, and they're now making their way into the wild. Google is rolling out an update now, which includes a redesigned Explore tab with recommendations for restaurants, cafes and bars. Those include curated, trending lists of what's worth checking out.
Pandora goes full Spotify with personalized playlists
Spotify began building custom-curated playlists back in 2015 and now Pandora is offering a similar option for its listeners. With that Pandora calls "personalized soundtracks," the company will put its Music Genome to work creating a library of playlists based on your listening habits. "The personalized playlists fit your moods, activities and favorite genres and are updated each week based on your individual musical tastes," chief product officer Chris Phillips explained in a blog post. "We combined our human curation with personalized algorithms to automatically serve up new artists and songs anticipating the perfect balance of discovery and steady favorites."
Steam puts curator-recommended games right up front in its store
In October, Valve announced it was working on an overhaul of the Steam Curator program and for the past few weeks it has been testing some major changes with a small group of Curators. Those changes are now live and they're aimed at improving the system for players, Curators and developers.
Instagram's latest test adds recommended posts to your feed
Instagram is testing a new feature that would add posts you might like to your main feed. The Verge reports that this "Recommended for You" section would include posts that your friends have liked or posts that Instagram's algorithm thinks you might enjoy. Instagram users can already see what their friends like by looking in the "Following" section in Notifications, but this would shuffle some of that into the main feed.
Facebook's friend-based Recommendations come to the UK
We've all been there. It's late and you're wandering around town, aimlessly looking for a place to grab dinner. Where do you turn for suggestions? Foursquare? Google? Maybe Facebook? The social network is a popular choice, given you know the people who will be commenting on your post (and therefore trust their advice). Now, the company is making it easier to crowdsource information with a new Recommendations tool. Write a status update and Facebook will "convert" it automatically, giving your friends a chance to chime in. All of their comments will be saved in a simple list, with a complimentary map to show you how close they are.
Apple's Store app knows what you want and when it's in stock
Apple's Store app (not to be confused with Apple's App Store) that provides info about its bricks-and-mortar retail locations adds a few decent features today, including knowing when your order is ready to pick up, for less in-store loitering time.
SoundCloud serves up new music based on your listening habits
Nearly every music streaming service has a feature that gives you new music to listen to based on audio habit. Spotify has Discover Weekly, Pandora compiles a custom station and Apple Music is making recommendations a big part of its redesign for iOS 10. SoundCloud is looking to offer a similar tool with its new Suggested Tracks section. The company says the picks come from its "state-of-the-art machine learning algorithm" that keeps tabs on your likes and plays on the web and through the mobile apps. While SoundCloud doesn't specify how often the list is updated ("frequently"), it did explain that there's a good chance the some of the new music won't be found on any other service.
Twitter rolls out 'Connect' to help you follow more accounts
Connect, Twitter's newest feature, allows users on iOS or Android to browse a curated list of accounts to follow -- it's like having a personal stylist for your Twitter account. The recommendations will be refined over time, but they're based on who you follow, tweets you like, popular local accounts, world events and a few other parameters. Twitter will explain why it's showing you each recommendation, too.
MightyTV brings Tinder-like swipes to your streaming queue
Swiping to control software existed long before Tinder's arrival, but the dating tool's method of showing approval has made its way to another of other apps. Swiping left or right can now help you sort through all of the options in your streaming queue. Thanks to MightyTV, you should spend a little less time scrolling aimlessly through the seemingly endless menu of options.
How Netflix's global growth is making recommendations better
Netflix recommendations might appear simple on the surface, but there's a specific science behind the lists of movies and TV shows it thinks you should watch next. Star ratings, Facebook integration and catalog size have traditionally played a part, but with the streaming company now operating in 130 countries worldwide, things needed to change.
YouTube uses notifications to pester you with recommendations
We'll admit that push notifications are a great way to keep up with new content when it arrives. However, those messages quickly become annoying when they relate to things that you really don't give a shit about it. For example, YouTube's new Android notifications for recommended stuff based on videos that you've watched. The good news is you can turn them off. A pop-up that explains the "occasional" annoyance feature gives you the choice of disabling the alerts. You can also turn them off from the notification itself or from the settings menu. If you like the tips, you can click the notification to watch the video immediately and there's an option to save it for later, too.
Pandora's iOS app now has better recommendations and a redesign
Pandora's iOS app is getting a much-needed facelift as well as a pretty major new feature today. The music streaming service has a new way to find tunes called Browse, which basically takes all of your listening history and songs you give a thumbs-up to and presents you with more radio station suggestions the company thinks you'll enjoy. It's pretty much a table stakes feature for a music streaming service at this point -- basically every Pandora competitor looks at your listening habits and offers up playlists, stations, albums and more to keep the music playing when you are feeling indecisive.
Yahoo releases massive 13.5TB web-browsing data set to researchers
Yahoo's business may be struggling, but millions of people still visit its site to read the news every day. That gives the company unique insights into browsing and reading habits, and today the company has released a huge swath of that data. The "Yahoo News Feed dataset" incorporates anonymous browsing habits of 20 million users between February and May of 2015 across a variety of Yahoo properties, including its home page, main news site, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Movies and Yahoo Real Estate.
Spotify recommends concerts based on your listening habits
Spotify's Discover Weekly feature curates a new playlist based on your listening habits every seven days. Now, the streaming service is using those tracks you play to serve up nearby concert recommendations, too. Spotify says the concert picks are based on the artists it knows you'll want to see live with some other acts it thinks you'll enjoy thrown in for good measure. Just like Discover Weekly, the recommendations will change with your musical tastes. What's more, when you're heading out of town, you can change your location to see which concerts are happening at your destination. The whole thing is powered by Songkick, and the Concerts feature hits Spotify's Android and iOS apps today.
BBC iPlayer now offers personalised suggestions after each programme
Across its TV, radio and online operations, the BBC produces a ton of new content every day. Making sense of it all on iPlayer and ultimately finding something to watch can, therefore, be a little daunting if you have specific tastes and interests. Thankfully, the BBC seems to have noticed and is now rolling out recommendations on iPlayer. So if you're signed in with a BBC ID, you'll see a carousel at the end of each programme filled with suggestions based on your iPlayer history. It's a small change, but one that should increase the amount of time people spend on iPlayer -- always handy for the BBC as it defends the licence fee -- and also help some of its niche content to find a larger audience.
Pocket invites you to try beta features, starting with recommendations
On the heels of last month's collaboration with Mozilla, Pocket has even more tools for you to try. In fact, the save-it-for-later repository wants you to test new features before they officially arrive in the app or on the web. Pocket's Beta Channel will give you a look at what the company has been working on and the chance to offer feedback. The program is available for Android, iOS and web versions of the software and there's already a new feature to put through its paces. First up for eager testers: recommendations. The tool puts a second feed next to the list of items you've chosen to stash, pulling in "top content from the billions of items saved to Pocket." The app then makes selections for you based on your reading habits so that the chances of you missing something good are drastically reduced. Recommendations is just the first feature that's coming to beta testers, so if you opt in, expect to see more new items soon.
Twitter is testing a 'You may also like' tweet discovery feature
From a "Suggested users" list to the MagicRecs push notification feature that recommends accounts and tweets, Twitter is constantly looking for ways for you to follow more people. Now it appears Twitter is adding yet another discovery method to the list. According to Venturebeat, Twitter has been testing a "You may also like" recommendation box along the right-hand rail of individual tweets. It lists as many as five related tweets it thinks you might like and if you hit "View more," it'll list an additional five below that. The feature is still in testing at the moment and there's no word if it'll actually roll out to the public at large.
