I'm impressed. It gave me what I thought to be a small, weak data set, but the recommendations were better than those I get from Netflix, which has much, much more of my data to work with.
> the recommendations were better than those I get from Netflix
I can tell you exactly why Netflix makes such poor recommendations, and why almost anyone can do better with modest effort:
Netflix has to give recommendations for you from the 6000 movies that it's currently showing[1]. They can't recommend movies that they don't have. Whereas Taste.io can choose from the entire universe of ~500,000 movies.
An example should make this clear: If you liked The Godfather, it's an easy prediction that you'll like The Godfather: Part II and Part III. Suppose Netflix is currently showing The Godfather, but not the sequels. They cannot recommend the sequels to you. But Taste.io is not bound by that restriction; they can in theory recommend any movie that exists. It's much easier to find matches among 500,000 movies than among 6000.
[1] Netflix has just 6332 movies in the USA as of this date and even less in other countries (eg., 4365 in Canada). Most people are surprised by how few movies Netflix actually has. The Netflix user interface makes it very difficult to get a good impression of the number of movies; you can't just scroll alphabetically through the entire list for example.
Source: http://netflixcanadavsusa.blogspot.ca/
Presumably Netflix are using a wider system to choose which movies to licence? I wonder what their process for adding movies is - do they have a list from each studio they work with and select a movie to add, out do the negotiated each one separately.
Seems they could have a not yet available category that would let people pre-order; they could recommend a far wider swathe of content then.
I get what you're saying, but Netflix seems even worse than that. To wit: taste.io recommended movies for me - which I enjoy and that are in Netflix's current catalog - that Netflix hasn't recommended for me.
What makes the rankings better than you get from Netflix? I'm impressed that it managed to suggest Clue to me, but I haven't seen the rest, so can't really say if I would like them. (More, if it just suggests movies I've already seen and liked... hard to say it did a good job, or that I'm just predictable in cliques of movies. :) )
The point of this site is to give you recommendations you haven't seen. I hate it when all the recommended movies on Netflix are all movies I've seen and can't get rid off...
They all look interesting. Many years ago, netflix did the same. It recommended me a bunch of movies that seemed really interesting and I liked a ton of them, but these days netflix is a low bar. I'd bet they could do a great job, but have a more limited movie selection. Either that or the algo has actually declined.
Are you just on streaming? I've noted that the recommendations for streaming are fairly restrictive since they only have around 6000 movies available at a time.
With DVDs, the greater selection means better recommendations.
These recommendations are pretty crazy (in a good way). All my favorite sci-fi, comedies and thrillers in one list. Impressed. Going to check all the ones I haven't seen
Same here. It showed me a bunch of blockbusters that I either haven't seen, were just kinda good, or even meh.
And came up with amazing recommendations of really cool movies I've either watched and loved, or haven't seen but always wanted to. Even the top pick for "movies from this year" was the one movie where I saw a trailer and said WANT.
I can tell you exactly why Netflix makes such poor recommendations, and why almost anyone can do better with modest effort:
Netflix has to give recommendations for you from the 6000 movies that it's currently showing[1]. They can't recommend movies that they don't have. Whereas Taste.io can choose from the entire universe of ~500,000 movies.
An example should make this clear: If you liked The Godfather, it's an easy prediction that you'll like The Godfather: Part II and Part III. Suppose Netflix is currently showing The Godfather, but not the sequels. They cannot recommend the sequels to you. But Taste.io is not bound by that restriction; they can in theory recommend any movie that exists. It's much easier to find matches among 500,000 movies than among 6000.
[1] Netflix has just 6332 movies in the USA as of this date and even less in other countries (eg., 4365 in Canada). Most people are surprised by how few movies Netflix actually has. The Netflix user interface makes it very difficult to get a good impression of the number of movies; you can't just scroll alphabetically through the entire list for example. Source: http://netflixcanadavsusa.blogspot.ca/