"It's a problem they want to solve for themselves", but note that they haven't tried all the alternative recommendation services and are only creating one as a last resort. They want to solve the problem, which is a different drive from wanting a recommendation app.

Now, if someone made a "Recommendation-Engine-in-a-Box", where someone who wanted to make a recommendation app for themselves would supply the content and could tweak the algorithm and the design, I could see that being successful in this market :)