This whole internet thing is amazing. I recently had the privilege of listening to Vint Cerf speak and one of the key points he drove home was that we are using about 1% of what the internet can do. Amazing.

So how does that tie into Yahoo! Movie Recommendations? First, some background.

Yahoo! has always been the number two player in the search engine game. Like the little brother that gets hand me downs, Yahoo! has never been known to lead the field. Things are changing at Yahoo! and this is best shown by their latest efforts. One of the latest efforts is the Yahoo! Movie Recommendations site.

I learned about this from theunofficiallyahooweblog. A great blog for everything Yahoo!.

Anyway, the Yahoo! Movie Recommendation site is used to help you ascertain what movies you may be interested in. The unique thing is that it takes all the information it knows about you to make this happen.

For instance, Yahoo! knows my:

• Birthdate
• Age
• Zip code
• Gender

For some people that may freak them out, but Yahoo! has a method of opting out of this tracking if it concerns you. I like it. I know that Yahoo! takes reasonable steps to protect my data.

I popped over to the Yahoo! Movie Recommendations site and was greeted with this page.

Notice how it had prefilled my age and gender. This is tied to my user ID, which is listed on the top of the page.

Since question one was answered, I moved to question two. What types of films do I like? I chose a little more than 50/50 between Independent and Hollywood films. Yahoo! Movies Recommendations then asked me to rate some movies.

The rating process is pretty cool. As you hover over the Rate It option, a box pops up allowing you to choose a rating from F to A+. The addition of the + and - was interesting.

Once you finish with the rating you're presented with the the Personalized Recommendations. The following is the screenshot of my personalized recommendations:

There are a few very cool things to notice about the personalized recommendations:

• Zip code: Since Yahoo! knows my zip code they can link to theaters in my area that are showing movies I may be interested in.
• Rating: Since this is an aggregated rating system, I can see what other Yahoo! users through of the movie as well as professional critics.
• TV Listings: I was surprised to see this. Since I use My Yahoo I have told Yahoo! which TV listing service to use. For me, it's DirecTV and you can see that Yahoo! has suggested movies I'd be interested in watching on TV today.

They also show DVDs I'd be interested in and other users who share the same interests as I do.

What this demonstrates, finally, is the power of aggregated information for something other than selling you something. Amazon pioneered using their database of personal information to pitch items to you, but it looks like Yahoo! is extending this to benefit you. Sure, they'll make money off the tickets and DVDs you buy, but you don't have to buy anything to benefit from this.

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