{"id":3559,"date":"2018-08-07T06:08:04","date_gmt":"2018-08-07T13:08:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/press\/?p=3559"},"modified":"2018-08-07T06:08:04","modified_gmt":"2018-08-07T13:08:04","slug":"firefox-offers-recommendations-with-latest-test-pilot-experiment-advance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/press\/2018\/08\/firefox-offers-recommendations-with-latest-test-pilot-experiment-advance\/","title":{"rendered":"Firefox Offers Recommendations with Latest Test Pilot Experiment: Advance"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p>The internet today is often like being on a guided tour bus in an unfamiliar city. You end up getting off at the same places that everyone else does. While it\u2019s convenient and doesn\u2019t require a lot of planning, sometimes you want to get a little off the beaten path.<\/p>\n<p>With the latest Firefox experiment, Advance, you can explore more of the web efficiently, with real-time recommendations based on your current page and your most recent web history.<\/p>\n<p>With <a href=\"https:\/\/testpilot.firefox.com\/experiments\/advance\">Advance<\/a> we\u2019re taking you back to our Firefox roots and the experience that started everyone surfing the web. That time when the World Wide Web was uncharted territory and we could freely discover new topics and ideas online. The Internet was a different place.<\/p>\n<p>We wondered, is it possible to recapture that serependitious moment of discovery, that opens people\u2019s eyes to greater awareness of the topic they were seeking? We explored<a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/firefox-context-graph\/context-graph-its-time-to-bring-context-back-to-the-web-a7542fe45cf3\"> the idea of a \u2018forward button\u2019 <\/a>to improve the way content is discovered, and launched our Context Graph initiative. It resulted in our first Context Graph feature, <a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/firefox-test-pilot\/graduation-report-activity-stream-31aed429bd49\">Activity Stream<\/a>, which initially tested in Test Pilot, and shipped in November with our <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/blog\/2017\/11\/14\/introducing-firefox-quantum\/\">new Firefox Quantum browser<\/a>. With today\u2019s Advance experiment, we hope to bring the concept of the recommender system more to life. At a point where people no longer need to go backwards in search to move forward to discover new, relevant content.<\/p>\n<h3><b>Here\u2019s how it works: <\/b><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/testpilot.firefox.com\/experiments\/advance\">Advance<\/a> is a Web Extension that works by analyzing content you\u2019re into right now in order to provide recommendations based on what you may want to \u201cRead Next\u201d through a sidebar in the browser.<\/li>\n<li>Additionally, Advance shares recommendations based on your recent online history which is discoverable in the \u2018For You\u2019 section of the sidebar. The recommendations will be based on what you visited once you\u2019ve installed the Web Extension.<\/li>\n<li>The Advance sidebar enables discovery without disrupting workflow.<\/li>\n<li>Recommendations are purely driven by relevance, the primary goal of this experience is to give you the best and most timely recommendations.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div id=\"attachment_11597\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\">\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11597\" src=\"https:\/\/ffp4g1ylyit3jdyti1hqcvtb-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Test-Pilot-Advance-Screenshot.jpg\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Test-Pilot-Advance-Screenshot.jpg 1920w, https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Test-Pilot-Advance-Screenshot-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Test-Pilot-Advance-Screenshot-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Test-Pilot-Advance-Screenshot-600x338.jpg 600w, https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Test-Pilot-Advance-Screenshot-1000x563.jpg 1000w\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Advance Recommendations listed on the left side<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>For example, you\u2019re just browsing the internet, and come across a page with a list of the hottest restaurants. Advance starts to recommend similar content around the most popular restaurants so that you can start comparing without having to do all the research on your own. These are based on the trusted sites you\u2019ve already visited, new sites are recommended for you to explore. If there\u2019s a recommendation you don\u2019t want, you have the option to flag it as \u201cNot interesting, off topic\/spam, block sites,\u201d or give direct feedback. The recommendations are personalized for you.<\/p>\n<p>Not a foodie? If you\u2019re a sports fan, an opera fan, or into the news, Advance makes current and relevant recommendations so that it\u2019s easy to hop off the bus to explore. Just browse the web normally and keep the sidebar open when you\u2019re feeling adventurous.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/testpilot.firefox.com\/experiments\/advance\">The Advance experiment is available for download<\/a> on Test Pilot and powered by <a href=\"https:\/\/laserlike.com\">Laserlike<\/a>, a machine learning startup that has built a web scale Content Search, Discovery and Personalization platform. It enables content discovery based on web browsing activity and getting diverse perspectives on any topic. \u00a0At Mozilla, we believe browser history is sensitive information and we want people to clearly understand that Laserlike will receive their web browsing history before installing the experiment. We have also included controls so that participants can pause the experiment, see what browser history Laserlike has about them, or request deletion of that information. We\u2019re interested in seeing how our users respond to their browsers having a more active role in helping them explore the web, and we\u2019ll experiment with different methods of providing these recommendations if we see enough interest.<\/p>\n<h3><b>Join our Test Pilot Program<\/b><\/h3>\n<p>The Test Pilot program is open to all Firefox users. Your feedback helps us test and evaluate a variety of potential Firefox features. We have more than 100,000 daily participants, and if you\u2019re interested in helping us build the future of Firefox, visit<a href=\"http:\/\/testpilot.firefox.com\"> testpilot.firefox.com<\/a> to learn more.<\/p>\n<p>If you\u2019re familiar with Test Pilot then you know all our projects are experimental, so we\u2019ve made it easy to give us feedback or disable features at any time from<a href=\"http:\/\/testpilot.firefox.com\"> testpilot.firefox.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Check out the <a href=\"https:\/\/testpilot.firefox.com\/experiments\/advance\">new Advance extension<\/a>. We\u2019d love to<a href=\"https:\/\/qsurvey.mozilla.com\/s3\/Laserlike-Feedback-Survey\"> hear your feedback<\/a>!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The internet today is often like being on a guided tour bus in an unfamiliar city. You end up getting off at the same places that everyone else does. While &hellip; <a class=\"go\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/press\/2018\/08\/firefox-offers-recommendations-with-latest-test-pilot-experiment-advance\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":144,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[833],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3559"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/144"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3559\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}