METHODS AND SYSTEM FOR GENERATING AUTOMATED ALTERNATIVE CONTENT RECOMMENDATIONS

A content and collaborative filtering system for recommending entertainment oriented content items, such as music and video, and other media content items to a user based on similarity in profile between the user and other users and between the content indexed in the user's profile and other content in the database. The system stores implicit and explicit ratings data for such content items provided by the users. Upon request of the user, the system accesses the user's profile and corresponding content interests database. The system uses the relationships between the content items to determine a subset of the content items to be referred to the user. The system also correlates a similarity between the user's ratings of the content items and other users' ratings. Based on the correlations, a subset of users is selected that is then used to provide recommendations to the user. The recommended items have a high probability of being subjectively appreciated by the user. The recommendations produced by the system will be represented to the user using a visual representation of the relationships between the content items allowing the user to explore the items related to the recommended items.