Machine Learning in Java - Second Edition

Hybrid approach

Now, between collaborative and content-based, which one should you choose? Collaborative filtering is able to learn user preferences from a user's actions regarding one content source, and use them across other content types. Content-based filtering is limited to recommending content of the same type that the user is already using. This provides value in certain use cases; for example, recommending news articles based on news browsing is useful, but it is much more useful if different sources, such as books and movies, can be recommended based on news browsing.

Collaborative filtering and content-based filtering are not mutually exclusive; they can be combined to be more effective in some cases. For example, Netflix uses collaborative ...