Comments on: StyleFeeder—Facebook’s Leading Shopping Engine—Thinks Big with Small Series A Round http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2008/01/29/stylefeeder-facebooks-leading-shopping-engine-thinks-big-with-small-series-a-round/ Business + Technology in the Exponential Economy Sat, 11 Feb 2012 03:54:18 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.4 By: Fabio http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2008/01/29/stylefeeder-facebooks-leading-shopping-engine-thinks-big-with-small-series-a-round/comment-page-1/#comment-23856 Fabio Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:30:22 +0000 http://www.xconomy.com/2008/01/29/stylefeeder-facebooks-leading-shopping-engine-thinks-big-with-small-series-a-round/#comment-23856 Let's start with a disclaimer, my company offers a service which is for many aspects similar to StyleFeeder (we're based in London, England though). However I really like what these guys are doing and I'm a bit envious for a few things they have! :) But there are at least 2 things in this article which are really too far-fetched. The first is this statement: "If you think Amazon has a lot of products, get ready for another multiple: there’s 20 times as much stuff in StyleFeeder’s database". C'mon, don't be silly. I wouldn't believe it even if I see it, it's just non sense. Period. The second thing is this claim: "M3F (maximum margin matrix factorization) performs several percentage points better than the state of the art in collaborative filtering". Well, this could be absolutely true but I find it pretty hard (at least) to standardize collaborative filtering and therefore trying to benchmark it or claiming to be several points ahead. Saying "we're the best" would be more convincing honestly. Also, with all the different applications for collaborative filtering 'social shopping' is definitely not the most popular and therefore not particularly prone to benchmarks and rankings. You might think I'm a hater, but I'm not. I'm just trying to be reasonable and honestly I'm fed up with the PR hype which sees readers as a gullible audience who swallows anything. Cheers, Fabio Let’s start with a disclaimer, my company offers a service which is for many aspects similar to StyleFeeder (we’re based in London, England though). However I really like what these guys are doing and I’m a bit envious for a few things they have! :)
But there are at least 2 things in this article which are really too far-fetched. The first is this statement: “If you think Amazon has a lot of products, get ready for another multiple: there’s 20 times as much stuff in StyleFeeder’s database”. C’mon, don’t be silly. I wouldn’t believe it even if I see it, it’s just non sense. Period.
The second thing is this claim: “M3F (maximum margin matrix factorization) performs several percentage points better than the state of the art in collaborative filtering”. Well, this could be absolutely true but I find it pretty hard (at least) to standardize collaborative filtering and therefore trying to benchmark it or claiming to be several points ahead. Saying “we’re the best” would be more convincing honestly. Also, with all the different applications for collaborative filtering ‘social shopping’ is definitely not the most popular and therefore not particularly prone to benchmarks and rankings.

You might think I’m a hater, but I’m not. I’m just trying to be reasonable and honestly I’m fed up with the PR hype which sees readers as a gullible audience who swallows anything.

Cheers,
Fabio

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