Alexis Madrigal over at the Atlantic went a little insane and decided to figure out just how many of those insanely precise genres Netflix has. The answer he came to, after some truly diligent work, was 76,897. In an interesting story he unfolds how Netflix has scientifically tagged and ranked films so that they can recommend exactly what you’d like. It’s a great read.
We’ve all stumbled over the insanely precise genres and found a few gems so it’s pretty impressive what Netflix has done here. They always seem to be spot on with whatever they’re recommending as it conforms to the genre, though I can’t say I always like what the give me. Nor can I say that I wouldn’t rather have an easier way to navigate and search films when I’m not on my computer. Hmmmm, maybe they’re trying to hide something.
