Are you sure that you read the Elkan and Mohan paper? They tested this cold-start process. And got real results.
On Wed, Dec 29, 2010 at 2:29 PM, Dmitriy Lyubimov <[email protected]> wrote: > Also, another observation they were making was that if we learn latent > links > and regression based on static user/item profiles as a first stage model, > and then > add model that considers side information as a second stage (when first > stage is being frozen) then we can have reasonable prediction for a user > based on its > profile out of the door before the user has yet to make any ratings (i.e. > before any side information has been available). Thus they say it is a > reasonable cold start > solution (which i think was part of the inquery in the original post, they > say they add 100s users per day i would like to make recommendations out of > the door). i think they implied that was a technique that yahoo media was > using. >
