Published on: May 20, 2009 It's clear that my Netflix account is taking WAY too many liberties with what I see or don't see featured under their "New Releases" heading. In other words, I'm missing new releases unless I take the time to seek them out. After a few visits that left me scratching my head about obvious omissions and then finally taking two minutes to actually compare my percpetions and reality side by side, my greatest couch potato fears were realized. It was in fact true--of the top 10 rentals (for that week, via IMDB), only one appeared on my NetFlix New Releases home page. The NetFlix feature that allows me to flag movies I've seen and liked/disliked and thus make targeted recommendations is the obvious suspect. Data driven content that's tailored to the users needs and preferences is a great tool--when it works. But in this case, it's seems to be trying too hard and in turn trimming [...]