App with personalized predictions to discover new movies!

Hello Indietalk community,

I am a big fan of films and filmmaking myself – even so much that I developed an App for iOS devices which helps discover movies I don't know yet but which are likely to be of my taste.

The app is called "Must-See – Discover your favorite movies!" (App Store link) and is Free to download (although it includes some ads to maintain the servers). The idea is simple: Rate movies you watched and you get a personalized prediction based on other users ratings. It's not just a recommendation system a la "People have also watched" but a really sophisticated algorithm that takes many factors into account.

But of course it's not perfect yet and therefore I am asking you:
What do you think? Do you like the idea of personalized predictions to discover new interesting movies?
Do you think, the predictions in the app are accurate and do you like the app?

Also, since I assume there are many filmmakers here as well:
How can Must-See be improved to fulfill your needs? It's just a young project right now and there are many more steps we are going to take with it to make it a really interesting place to find new movies. I would love to introduce ways to discover less known and independent movies within Must-See as well, if possible.

I'd love to hear your ideas, opinions and thoughts about Must-See.

All the best,
Dschee

what makes this different from netflix suggested titles

@WhiteOpus: Netflix is a company that tries to sell their product. They only provide suggestions for movies they provide themselves, so there is a vast amount of interesting movies you won't ever come across in any suggestions from Netflix.

Must-See on the other hand is a platform, uses the open TMDb database and is therefore neutral and supports any movie that is released. This alone makes it much more interesting for movie discovery. But it also supports a concept called "Movie Properties" which is basically a rating of different properties of movies like "Action", "Humor", "Suspense". This both helps you discover movies based on these properties and improves the calculation and predictions a lot because you can get different predictions for different kinds of movies.

These are the biggest two current differences. But there are many more features planned for Must-See to be released later this year including organizing movie nights with friends and common predictions, custom discovery filters and more.

It does sound like a watered down version of Amazon's system.

Silly question. Are you only covering Hollywood movies or are you also going to include the 5000+ independent movies that are made each year?

Do you maintain the database or do you rely upon the filmmakers to enter in the data?

How do you ensure accuracy?

My issue would be the metrics you use to determine which films I like and how you'd work out what would be right for me.

How are you going to do a better job than companies with access to big data?

Last. I hate specialized apps. I'm not sure if others are in the same boat. I prefer to have less apps and have the information I want delivered the way I want it.

@Sweetie:
Must-See uses completely different concepts for its calculation system than Amazon or Netflix and therefore can't be compared to those. It is not a recommendations system but a prediction system which is something different.

I don't maintain the database, we are using the database on TheMovieDB.org, an open user-based database platform where everybody (filmmaker or user) can add data. Therefore we support all independent movies that are entered into TheMovieDB.org. But of course we can only give recommendations for movies that people using Must-See have rated since the predictions are based on other users. So if you can't see any independent movies within the app yet this simply is because very few people have rated such.

The algorithm is quite sophisticated and takes several factors into account before it gives any prediction. For example there is a minimum number of ratings needed for a movie in order a prediction to be calculated. This and our regular improvements of the algorithm are steps to ensure accuracy.

We DO have access to big data in its actual meaning already ("too many data points to process all") and are hoping to get even more users to use Must-See so we become one of the big players within the next few years.

To your "last": Well, Must-See is definitely a specialized app. It helps you discover new movies, that's specialized to movies and discovery. If you are not interested in this, then Must-See probably isn't for you. But if you prefer to have less apps then I wonder how you succeed the information you want to be delivered the way you want? Less apps means less possibilities and less information. Of course you should only install what you really need but I really can't follow your "last" argumentation.

K

It does sound like you've got an interesting premise.

If you are not interested in this, then Must-See probably isn't for you. But if you prefer to have less apps then I wonder how you succeed the information you want to be delivered the way you want?

Click to expand...

I do like the idea that someone can recommend movies based on previous experiences, though if it's an app, I'm unlikely to install it. It'd just become one more app that I forgot was there.

If your aim is to develop a business, listening to ideas that may help increase your userbase may be something worthwhile considering. Limiting yourself to an app is specifically what I'm talking about. For the end user, I find apps to be one of the least convenient, most cumbersome methods to gather data. In my mind, Email would be a better option, with website/email combination beating either option, but that's just my opinion. In the end its your business and you can do what you want.

We DO have access to big data in its actual meaning already ("too many data points to process all") and are hoping to get even more users to use Must-See so we become one of the big players within the next few years.

Click to expand...

I hope you succeed. Good luck.

@Sweetie:

Thank you for the carification, now I understand you.

I am open to any feedback so thank you for sharing your opinion. We are already planning to develop a website as well which might better fit your needs. But for now Apps are our first approach: Their success prove that many people have an other opinion on apps than you do. But since Must-See should be for everyone we will consider alternatives as well, of course.

Thank you,
Dschee