Started sketching out some ideas for a platform agnostic / activitypub enabled recommendation engine to replace the substack network effect. Probably as a simple embeddable widget.
Would you use something like that?
What would it need / how would you want it to work?
I’m torn — on the one hand, discoverability here on the Fediverse can be tricky (which is both a bug and a feature, of course) … so tools for discoverability can be great
On the other hand, the historic track-record of recommendation systems in social networks has generally tended towards rich-get-richer dynamics that rarely lead anywhere great 😂
@clive@Daojoan Clive it could be enabled per server with different inputs — or webring style, per blog — both of which change the platform / network effects.
You’re plucking items from a long tail which just isn’t going to be the same as a single platform kingmaker.
@Daojoan Even the idea of adding different weights to the people/hashtags I follow would be handy. There are some more niche users and hashtags I follow that just get lost in the home feed. Lists kind of achieve this but aren't granular enough.
@sellathechemist they have a powerful opt in recommendation system that lets bloggers curate lists of other bloggers on substack and cross promote to their readers. Drives 20% of all substack subscriptions.
@Daojoan@sellathechemist couldn’t this just be recommendations in the “thanks for subscribing” email?
I’m not sure we need tech to pull 90% of this stuff off. I mean back in the day, probably 80% of people who snagged my blog’s rss came from the blogrolls of other blogs. I’d pay more attention to what the author I just subscribed to recommends than any rec engine.
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