Cell Phones Could Soon Make Product Recommendations

This isn’t available yet, but it’s worth a mention. eWEEK reports that Fast Search & Transfer is demonstrating new recommendation-based features to its Active Mobile product suite, in order to help media companies better market their content to consumers through cell phones. The article gives an example of how it works by showing how consumers “can access an online movie storefront through an iPhone and browse DVDs with Fast Mobile to receive personalized recommendations.”

Ryan Jones, director of telecom and media product marketing for Norway-based Fast, selected the film ‘The Incredibles,’ and the recommendation tool returned suggestions for similar types of films, including ‘Toy Story’ and ‘A Bug’s Life.’ Jones said the recommendation tool compared his clickstream with those of hundreds of other users.

That’s pretty powerful stuff; instead of having to hire people to group movies together and populate a “recommendation” database manually, the system sort-of-learns what people are doing based on their click patterns, and then uses that as a recommendation engine. The company envisions content providers like NBC, or carriers such as Verizon Wireless, could buy and implement the technology in future cell phone services.

Fast Beats Rivals to Mobile Social Search [eWEEK]

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