Giving Away Our Recommendation Engine for Free by Doug Daniels.
From the post:
What’s better than a recommendation engine that’s free? A recommendation engine that is both awesome and free.
Today, we’re announcing General Availability for the Mortar Recommendation Engine. Designed by Mortar’s engineers and top data science advisors, it produces personalized recommendations at scale for companies like MTV, Comedy Central, StubHub, and the Associated Press. Today, we’re giving it away for free, and it is awesome.
…
Cool!
But before the FOSS folks get all weepy eyed, let’s remember that in order to make use of a recommendation engine, you need:
- Data, lots of data
- Understanding of the data
- Processing of the data
- Debugging your recommendations
- Someone to make recommendations to
- Someone to pay you for your recommendations
And those are just the points that came to mind while writing this post.
You can learn a lot from the Mortar Recommendation Engine but it’s not a threat to Mortar’s core business.
Any more than Oracle handing out shrink wrap copies of Oracle 36DD would impact their licensing and consulting business.
When you want to wield big iron, you need professional grade training and supplies.