Amazon knows me better than Facebook or Google.

Who Knows You Best?

I just opened  Amazon to buy a book and I was astonished at the number and accuracy of the suggestions that they suggested to me. They seemed to have 1-2 books across all the areas that I like to read about.  It was incredible how accurate and intriguing their selections were.  And I bought a few more books.

Wife's Brand, Including Facebook Page

Facebook seems to have no idea what I want.  They keep allowing game invitations to make it to me although I routinely ignore or ban every game invitation.  And many  posts that my friends make that I would have loved  to  know about, I never see.  I am the manager on half a dozen Facebook pages and I love to read and comment on there but these posts never seem to make it into my feed. They force me to click through just to fine them.  .  And my wife's blog which I religiously comment on and like, they never seem to show me.

In contrast, Google seems to be clueless about what interests me and my history. I know this is apples and oranges but when I start to type into an email address bar, Google is as likely to suggest email addresses of people that I haven't mailed to for years as they are to suggest the people that I write to ten times a day.  And don't even get me started on the random collection of posts that make it into my Google Plus feed.


Youtube is a little better and making suggestions but their responses to searches are weird.  For instance, I like to track popular and interesting homeschool curriculum review videos but when  I search on Youtube for homeschooling, they give me a totally random collection of new and old, popular and not videos.  Why? Anybody know anything about how they make their choices?

The other social media that seems to get me in LinkedIn   Their suggestions of people are often enthralling and I find myself clicking through reading about people that I know or who I would like to know.