Company
Date Published
May 23, 2024
Author
Ferenc Fazekas
Word count
1133
Language
English
Hacker News points
None

Summary

In this text, strategies for providing personalized recommendations even for users who are interacting with AI-driven products for the first time are discussed. The "cold start problem" is introduced, which refers to the challenge of making accurate recommendations when there is insufficient information about a new user's preferences. Three solutions are proposed: 1) Explore Preferences During Onboarding - asking users explicit questions about their goals, preferences, and interests during registration and their first few interactions with the product; 2) Enrich Profiles for Better Collective Filtering - using metadata gathered during registration and onboarding to suggest products that users with similar profiles like or popular near the user's location; and 3) Exploit Existing Data - leveraging existing data from other sources, such as a customer loyalty card number. Tools like Airbyte can help break data silos and ingest first-party, second-party, and even third-party data to overcome the cold start challenge.