Netflix has announced a one million dollar prize for the first person who can improve the accuracy of movie recommendations based on personal preferences.

To win the prize, which is to be announced today, a contestant will have to devise a system that is more accurate than the company’s current recommendation system by at least 10 percent. And to improve the quality of research, Netflix is making available to the public 100 million of its customers’ movie ratings, a database the company says is the largest of its kind ever released.

If no one wins the prize after a year, Netflix will award $50K for the submission that does best performing system that improves performance by more than one percent.

This dataset will be a great asset to researchers working on user modelling, machine learning and recommendation systems. There may be some privacy problems that surface, however. Given that you know I am a Netflx customer and a few unsuual moves that I’ve received from Netflix, can you pick out my profile? If so, it might reveal a few movies that I don’t want the general public to know I rated highly, like Gidget Goes Hawaiian. Just ask Robert Bork about it.

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