"My recommendations haven't changed in a while..."
"Sometimes the similar books I'm shown just aren't similar..."
In most cases, we pride ourselves in responding quickly to user feedback.
However, with recommendations and similar books, although Rob is always working away on the next version, it can be weeks or months before we're able to say: "Okay, we've now addressed that! Take another look!"
Why is that?
Two words:
Machine learning.
At this moment, the app is communicating with our machine learning backend. This is why only Plus members get unlimited recommendation searches. Each one costs money!
The thing with machine learning (ML) — where computers learn from data, identify patterns, and make decisions on their own — is that after you make tweaks to the model, you have to wait days or weeks for the computer to train (i.e. learn), before you can assess if your changes were any good.
Sometimes, when the results aren't good enough, it's not immediately clear whether the computer just needs to train some more or your original approach is flawed.
Rob and I will often see blog posts about huge companies with an ML budget in the millions and training that takes months.
Depending on how you look it, those articles can either be validating or terrifying... 👀 😅
Since last time...
I'm delighted to announce that the redesign I'd been working on for weeks is finally done! 🎉
What better way to highlight the changes than with some fun before and after shots, eh? 😌
This is just the beginning of the design improvements we want to make, but we reckon we're off to a great start! 💪🏾
Psst. we need more volunteer librarians to help us improve the book data on our site. There's no minimum time commitment and we have a fun Discord community. To find out more about applying, email support@thestorygraph.com.
Next two weeks
Speaking of huge ML budgets, we're going to need sell a lot more Plus subscriptions soon if we want the business to survive as we grow. 😅
Our conversion from free trial to paying is currently 9.2% (Is that good? It's not bad, right?), but only 1% of our 52k monthly active users have entered a trial.
Over the next two weeks, I need to investigate what's happening here: do our users not know about Plus and the free trial? Is the offering not compelling?
If you're somebody who took out a free trial and either converted or didn't, or you're a regular user who hasn't done a free trial yet, hit "Reply" to let me know why!
What I'm reading right now
I want to slowly work my way through Toni Morrison's novels. I've only read Beloved before. Her debut is The Bluest Eye.
Have a great week,
Nadia
P.S. Know somebody who's an avid reader or would enjoy following along with this journey? Please do forward this email to them! Thank you. :-)
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