Hot or Not founder credits 1999 Jester dataset as the pioneer behind collaborative filtering

jfiance · x · 2026-09-27

Hot or Not co-founder James Hong recounts meeting Berkeley professor Ken Goldberg, whose 1999 Jester joke-recommender project pioneered collaborative filtering with 4.1M ratings from 73,421 users. Hong says Hot or Not was originally conceived as a collaborative-filtering dataset for dating, and credits Berkeley's culture of quirky ideas for inspiring it.

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