Without turning this into a play on words, it’s interesting that personalization is very personal. The more people I talk to about what personalization is, the more answers I get.

This is one of these funny paradoxes because, basically, in any survey you read, it is clear that, if asked, people want personalization. But if you ask the same people to describe personalization, they can’t explain it.

When discussing personalization, it often comes down to anecdotal examples of where Netflix’s recommender didn’t work. But to turn that on its head, the reason why Netflix is brought up is because it’s so good that when it fails, it gets noticed, while most attempts at personalization are challenging to spot.

I am curious: can any of you explain what good personalization is (without using specific examples)

Usually, I define it as optimizing for two things:
* Help the user find what they are looking for fast
* Educate the users and help them find the content they didn’t know they needed but do.