The ThisOneNext FAQ

TON produces recommendations based purely on collective taste: when books, CDs or DVDs are entered into the same favorites list, they become associated with each other. The more often particular items appear on different lists, the stronger that association becomes. Purely and simply, TON represents mass opinion. Over time the recommendations should get better and better as the database grows. (Note that books, CDs or DVDs by the same authors, artists or directors you have entered already won't appear in the results - we've assumed that you've thought of trying those!)

How should I use it?

If you simply want a quick recommendation, you only need to enter one book, CD or DVD; confirm that we've got the right one on the next page, and then you can click the button to get some recommendations. The best thing to do, though, is enter a list of favorites, which can you can do when you register. This will give you more focused recommendations, as well as helping to build the database and share your taste with other users of the site. If you enter your email address, your list of favorites will be remembered next time you visit, so you can then add new titles and get even more appropriate recommendations.

The neat thing about ThisOneNext is that you can enter the site in four different ways: you can choose to log in to just books, CDs or DVDs - or you can log in to the combined site to explore all three at once!

Who's behind it?

TON is the brainchild of Andrew Chapman and Paul Lenz at Thoughtplay Ltd, with programming by James Gardner. We're the people behind the big success of the UK 2005 general election, Who should you vote for?, and TON started out as the hugely popular book recommendation site What Should I Read Next?. That site is still running but now links into TON so you can get recommendations for music and films as well as books - or even all three at once! We love creating interesting online projects that get real people involved - look out for more sites on their way. You can contact us via the Thoughtplay site if you have any feedback or ideas - we'd love to hear from you.

Doesn't Amazon do all this with its recommendations?

Amazon certainly offers a useful recommendation system, but it is based on your past buying patterns and those of other users - but you don't always buy books, CDs or DVDs for yourself. Our system has no commercial agenda at all (though you can buy the recommended items through Amazon, of course), and is purely based on items that real people actually like. We're not trying to urge you to buy particular bestsellers or anything like that - we simply want to help people share their favourites with each other.

Are you making money from this?

The only money we make is if people buy items through Amazon - we get a very small percentage. This will help to cover our site hosting and programming costs, but is certainly not something we can live off! Everything at the site is completely free for you to use.

What happens if I enter my email address? Will I be spammed?

Entering your email, as explained above, simply means you can come back and add new favorites to your previous list.We may send you the occasional message to let you know about updates to the site or new projects we're launching, but these would be infrequent, and we absolutely do NOT share email addresses with any third party, and we never will.