Firefly Helps to Lead the Way With Personalized Lists of Entertainment

The Internet is the place where word of mouth has come to take on dizzying, epic proportions. The multitudinous labyrinth that is commonly called an Information Superhighway often falls short of disseminating well-informed news. Many a roadway is more of a mis information trail or a pokey little opinion path.

A few sites have tried to introduce some good ol’ scientific know-how to this vast free-for-all. Using the Internet, not just as a blank page to write on but as the technological wizard that it is, sites like these promise to tailor lists with your entertainment taste in mind.

What was once a home-grown effort called the Similarities engine has been bought byFirefly, a company that provides personalzed communities such as My Launch (the interactive arm of Launch CD-ROM) (https://www8.mylaunch.com/MyMusic/fs_Start.asp). Members (membership is free) can read music reviews, gossip columns, sample sounds or chat with others who share their musical tastes. Coolest of all, members can retrieve their very own personalized list of suggested musical artists and albums.

Once you’ve rated a mess of music, the clever computer provides you with a list of stuff you’re likely to like. Visitors are asked to rate on a scale from “hated it” to “not my thing” to “loves it” and “the best.” The more you rate, the more accurate (supposedly) your recommendations will be.

But you don’t need to have a computer to gauge that your average music lover is bound to appreciate Billie Holiday or Ray Charles or the Beatles, which were a few of the suggested artists. I was told I might like Bruce Springsteen and the Rolling Stones. But did they mean Springsteen of the E Street Band days or the “Born in the USA” Bruce? Disappointingly, the engine is much less robust than it had been last year.

“Movie Critic” (https://moviecritic.com/) does pretty much the same thing for films. It employs a “patented movie predictor” powered by a technology dubbed “Like Minds.” “Movie Critic” guesses what your rating will be and also tells you what others have rated the film. After rating about 20 films, the server gave me a list of films it imagined I would fancy.

It was a mixed bag. About five of the 20 films listed I did, in fact, like very much (“Il Postino,” “Big Night”). I plan to see about six or seven of the films. And I would never be caught dead spending $7 or so to see about four or five of the films (“Paulie,” “Lost in Space”). Still, it’s a fun waste of time.

Of course, a random choice from a list of popular films might, in fact, be as accurate. After all, they may be able to send e-mail to the moon, but nobody has been able to figure out yet how to map and measure aesthetic sensibilities.

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Erika Milvy is a freelance writer based in San Francisco. She can be reached at erika@well.com.