
Movie recommendations based on your personal taste - lifwanian
http://www.taste.io
======
flopit
Nice work !

But :

"About us" ([http://www.taste.io/about](http://www.taste.io/about)): There is
nothing about you...

You ask people for their names, email addresses and/or to link to their
facebook accounts but you don't return the courtesy of identifying yourself or
your company.

You make some promises and cite some laws about privacy
([http://www.taste.io/privacy-policy](http://www.taste.io/privacy-policy)) but
if you don't say who you are, we can't even be sure that those apply to you...

~~~
Animats
These guys are trying hard to hide their identity. No business name or
address. No SSL cert. Anonymously registered domain in Panama. Hosted by a
telecom in Sweden. Nothing in Google, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

The "Privacy" page gives a hint. It gives a contact address of
"contact@ymal.io". "ymal.io" just redirects back to "taste.io". But WHOIS
gives some info for "ymal.io". It's registered to [redacted].

That location is a 5-story building, but the most likely location is Spark
Labs, which is a co-working space.[1] $550 a month for a desk. And, yes,
"ymal.io" is listed as a member of Spark Labs.[2] So, if you need to find
them, that's where to look.

[1] [http://www.desksurfing.net/desks/1045-spark-
labs](http://www.desksurfing.net/desks/1045-spark-labs) [2] [http://spark-
labs.co/members/](http://spark-labs.co/members/)

~~~
anoncow
Some of us have to hide identities as it can affect our current employment.

~~~
mtmail
From a user's perspective it looks shady and shouldn't be the basis one starts
a business on.

------
eevilspock
I love the fact that the ratings are semantic, and limited to four easy to
understand values rather than 5 stars:

    
    
        Awful (Can I have those two hours back?)
    
        Meh (Not great, but better than nothing 
             to kill time, escape or veg out)
    
        Good (I enjoyed watching it)
    
        Amazing (I'd watch it again and recommend
                 it to friends without hesitation)
    

With 5 stars, everyone interprets 2, 3 and 4 stars differently, e.g.:

    
    
        Horrible  Bad  Meh   Good       Best
    
        Bad       Meh  Good  Very-Good  Faves
    

Even the same person over time will not use a 5-star scale consistently. Even
when I try to be consistent (I use the latter values for Netflix), if I like a
movie but don't love it I don't know whether to give it 3 or 4 stars. On
different days in different moods I'll make different choices.

I've no doubt that unreliable ranking data made Netflix recommendations
harder, and impacted their mix of recommendation algorithms -- i.e. leaning
more heavily on those that work despite rating scale inconsistencies. I'd
expect the mix that works best for Taste.io will be different.

~~~
sqtomato
I have to agree that the rating options are very refreshing and easier to keep
consistency over time. It also forces a choice between positive and negative
which I'd imagine helps the algorithm learn things faster. Hmm...

------
projectileboy
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.

~~~
computator
> 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/](http://netflixcanadavsusa.blogspot.ca/)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
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.

~~~
corobo
It's been reported they use piracy sites to gauge popularity. They probably
have other deciders too, this one's the most interesting though.

[https://torrentfreak.com/netflix-uses-pirate-sites-to-
determ...](https://torrentfreak.com/netflix-uses-pirate-sites-to-determine-
what-shows-to-buy-130914/)

------
masters3d
So I am tired of having to manually rate every movie for every new service.
Why isn't there a way to keep all my ratings as an interchangble file? I spent
about 2 hours ratings abou 1000 movies. I've done the same before for Netflix
etc. seems like a huge waste of time, we need an open API for all these
services.

~~~
OJFord
[https://trakt.tv/](https://trakt.tv/)

Alternatively I've seen more than a few things use IMDb, or Rotten Tomatoes.

~~~
dawnerd
Trakt used to be excellent until they decided to redesign everything. I tried
giving the new site a chance but ultimately decided to stop my VIP
subscription and move on.

~~~
barnt
We'd love to hear any feedback or suggestions you have via our support site.
That's perfectly fine if you've decided to move on. Just wanted to point out
the site has evolved a ton since the initial v2 launch over 1.5 years ago if
you're interested in giving Trakt another chance :)

~~~
dawnerd
I guess I could give it another go. Didn't realize it's been that long
alright.

~~~
barnt
Shoot us a message at support@ if you have any feedback or questions.

------
garbage_stain
I had fun playing with this, but what I noticed is that the recommendations
started well, but as I rated more movies, they became less and less accurate.

Is it possible that whatever technique you are using to model individual users
is overfitting to noise in their ratings?

------
OisinMoran
Wow this great! Beautifully designed and delighted to see someone using 4
options rather than 5 it's so much easier.

Profile is at 90% and have only heard of 3 in all my top matches, very
interesting. Ugestu from 1953 is the top at 100%, what exactly does the 100%
mean? Excited to watch it now!

------
vmarsy
Is this supposed to be a Show HN?

Where does it get your move list from? I know I rated a lot of movies on my
rotten-tomatoes profile, can this be used?

EDIT: Also, it's not clear that you can start using the product without
Facebook, I like the fact that it lets you rate a couple movies before asking
you to sign-up (with Facebook _or with a regular email /password_)

~~~
twohlix_
Facebook auth is also failing for me as I receive an internal server error
during auth.

~~~
lifwanian
Hey! I work on the site, sorry for the mishap. You should be able to
authenticate now!

------
lucb1e
I just spent a good hour adding every movie I can remember seeing. The
suggestions still look like ORDER BY RAND() of every movie made since the 60s.

What a waste of time, again. I had a similar experience on tanktop.tv a year
or two ago, though that did a slightly better job of at least suggesting
modern (well-made) movies.

------
greggyb
Is there any way to filter the recommendations down to the offerings from
various content providers?

E.g. 'Available streaming on Netflix'

~~~
lifwanian
Coming soon!

~~~
cpeterso
I've rated _many_ films on Netflix. It would be cool to be able to import my
ratings from Netflix (or similar services like Amazon Video or IMDb) into
Taste.io. Your service would get a lot more data to work with. :)

So far the recommendations have been very good and I've bookmarked a couple
films to watch later.

------
graeme
Very interesting. This did two things:

1\. Correctly identified a bunch of movies I had seen and really liked + some
promising ones I hadn't seen, and 2\. Showed me that I don't like any new
movies

None of the 2016 movies were over 70% for me, whereas it identified some
movies I had seen and loved as 97+%.

How does this work?

~~~
careersuicide
I had a similar experience. Every highly rated recommendation was either one
of my favorite movies or on my list of movies I need to see very soon but
haven't made the time for yet.

It knew to put The Holy Mountain at 100% based off me loving the new Mad Max,
feeling ambivalent about the Star Wars prequels, hating the 2007 Tranformers
movie, and thinking Anchor Man was good but not great. Like, how the hell?
It's spot on, but how did it get that from my input? Is there more info on how
this thing is getting its results? I would love to see even a sketchy outline
of the algorithm.

------
butz
Would be awesome to have import option from CSV file. After jinni.com folded,
I've been tracking my movie ratings in spreadsheet file.

------
enimodas
Nice, the rating consensus system makes me curious about some stats, like for
all users, the best movies with high consensus, and a list of good movies with
least consensus.

~~~
lifwanian
Interesting question, just ran a quick analysis for all movies rated 4.5+ star

Highest Consensus:

1\. Whiplash

2\. 12 Angry Men

3\. Se7en

Most Controversial:

1\. Birdman

2\. Citizen Kane

3\. 2001: A Space Odyssey

~~~
Mithaldu
> 1\. Birdman

I knew that abomination was polarizing, but i did not quite expect that.

~~~
Quasimoto3000
Abomination? That was oone of my favorite movies of all time!

~~~
Mithaldu
;)

It's an emotion vs intellect thing. Birdman is like cocaine to people who like
the emotional side, and like hydrochloric acid for people who want a movie to
be rational.

I'm just surprise the numbers even bear that out like that.

~~~
johnjuanlin
><

------
douche
Has this been around for a while, and gotten a recent facelift? I remember
something very similar (and may have even been called Taste) back in 2013.

~~~
lifwanian
The site is only a few months old, if you could remember the other site I'd
love to know.

~~~
rahimnathwani
I was looking for something a few months ago, and a friend recommended this
site he'd been using for many years:
[http://www.filmtipset.se/](http://www.filmtipset.se/)

------
mrob
Can you please show release dates? Sometimes I'm not sure if a movie is the
original or a remake.

EDIT: The release date is included in the URL for the movie.

------
tlogan
Very impressive.

Recommendation are excellent - I noticed that recommendations are NOT about
movie genre but about how the movies are made, their point, story, etc.

I.e., I hate when Netflix thinks that I like all stupid vampire movies because
I liked Thirst [1].

[1]
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0762073/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0762073/)

------
kstenerud
One thing I've noticed is that it's not very good with sequels.

For example, I liked the original Planet of the Apes, but I've absolutely
hated every single one since. Yet it keeps recommending more sequels even
though I've marked them "awful".

I've also noticed that it won't stop recommending various Lord of the Rings
movies, even though I've marked every single one of them as awful.

I'm still not sure if the recommendations are good or not. I'm at 92% now, and
half the recommendations it gives that I've already seen are bad, so I'm not
inclined to believe the ones I haven't seen yet.

I also noticed that it started out with lots of sci-fi and action movies, to
the point that I had to start manually searching for romance movies just to
get them to even show up. Basically, after the first 4-5 movies, you're stuck
in a genre.

------
kozikow
I am curious why you used the user-closeness model.

Matrix factorisation won the Netflix prize:
[http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1608614](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1608614)
. What made you go for user closeness?

~~~
lifwanian
We've tested other models but collaborative filtering gave us the most
"human"/natural results. Also, didn't Netflix toss the matrix factorization
after the contest? IIRC they decided to keep their current algorithm.

~~~
bunderbunder
Interestingly, my sense has been that Netflix's recommendation engine does a
poorer job now than it did 10 years ago. I always assumed that it was because
they used to use fairly straightforward collaborative filtering, and now they
seem to be heavily focused on looking for stuff that's somehow cosmetically
similar to other stuff I've watched.

So, like, instead of saying, "You liked Nosferatu? Well, other people who
liked Nosferatu also liked Ran, so let's suggest that," it now goes, "Hey,
that's a vampire movie! How about Blade?"

------
advisedwang
Nice! I'd love to be able to point it to my IMDB data. Both because it's got a
comprehensive list of my ratings, but also so that it knows which movies I've
seen to avoid recommending them!

------
tluyben2
Did this work for anyone? Meaning; anyone got good (for them) suggestions?
Where does the data set come from?

Am I blind or did I miss the button for 'I did not see this movie'? Because I
didn't see quite a lot of the ones that I was asked my opinion on.

All in all, I always like these kind of things, but asking me if I like that
Star Wars drivel 3 times in a row and then asking me if I liked 4 movies I
never saw skewed my results a bit I think.

Keep improving though! If I can get only one 'wow' movie I never saw
recommended, I would be really happy.

~~~
johnjuanlin
There's a "Haven't Seen" button right below the 4 circles. (At least for me
:/)

~~~
tluyben2
A there is not for me (Chrome on Linux). I found it by trying some zooming
options. Thanks.

------
Jasamba
Suggestion of 'Spirited Away' based purely on my ratings of X-Men and Saw?
Spot on! I would love to read about the algorithm you guys are using (in an
upcoming paper perhaps? :))

~~~
graeme
Indeed! I'm baffled. Is there a dataset of film style this is drawing on, or
is it purely based on prior user trends?

------
OJFord
What I've always hoped for from a service like this is explicit sequel
recommendation.

Of course, you might get it organically since the original film and its sequel
are presumably pretty similar, but it would be nice to have some kind of list
of unseen sequels for those films which you gave a positive rating.

------
Ham5ter
Maybe my fingers are to fat. Everytime I tried to Click/Touch the skip Option,
it rated a movie good...

------
ivm
It would be great to have my ratings in a public profile. After getting to 94%
I can send it to friends so they can check out if they've seen all movies I
consider amazing and good.

By the way, Friday evening is a bad day for a "ShowHN" post.

------
basdp
This site begs for a IMDB rating import function... I've rated hundreds on
movies on there, but I'm not prepared to do it all again on a different site
while all the data is already for the grabs..!

~~~
basdp
BTW, loving the idea and already found some promising new movies to watch!

------
lazyant
I don't think I got good recommendations (based on the ones I've seen) but
then again I have peculiar tastes; I think Lilo and Stich is a great movie and
se7en is a meh movie (and I can argue why).

~~~
a_small_island
>and se7en is a meh movie (and I can argue why).

I challenge you.

~~~
lazyant
well, I've seen it twice and it's a fine movie but I don't see there's
anything special about it, the serial killer using a theme has been done a
million times, the only twist is the motivation/endgame of the killer in this
case. Acting is good and overall the movie is entertaining but I fail to see
anything other than a build-up for the grand finale (goo but not mind-blowing
or totally unexpected), it's a 3.5/5 or 4/5 for me, still can't see why it
consistently shows up in top movie listings.

OTOH I haven't been wowed by a movie since The Matrix so I'm probably just an
old man yelling at the clouds.

------
RestlessMind
I already maintain a list of movies to watch based on whatever interests me on
netflix + random lists on internet. I took their quiz and their
recommendations had good overlap with my existing list. Impressive!

------
a_small_island
Cool user flow. I bet you could hit me with another facebook login request
with the "see your results" popup, and I might not even mind it. That said, I
won't click it.

------
dawnerd
Appears I reached the end of all the movies. Says theres only 1715 movies.
Either thats incorrect or there's a very tiny amount of movies imported.

------
bradbeattie
Playing around with it I'm finding the interface notably more friendly than
MovieLens.org for inputting ratings, but the results seem worse.

------
ptrincr
This is good. Impressive. It managed to recommend me Soyaris, a Russian film
based on the same book Solaris was based on. Great film.

------
johnloeber
Very cool. My list of recommendations included movies I greatly liked, as well
as ones that have for a long time been on my to-watch list.

------
jim-greer
Are others getting a lot of recommendations for old movies? I have to be in
just the right mood for a movie from the 1950s or earlier...

~~~
lifwanian
You can use the filter on the browse page to filter out old movies, or simply
hide them!

------
redcalx
It would be cool if you could use this to find people with similar taste, i.e.
mentally _and_ geographically proximate.

------
threepipeproblm
For me this was significantly worse than Netflix and others I've tried. Looks
like others have fared better.

------
puranjay
Some pretty nice recommendations! I got Barton Fink, Throne of Blood...movies
I'd never think about otherwise

------
rekwah
I've love to see this integrated with a TV/Movie scrobbler such as trakt.tv.

------
BlytheSchuma
Suggestions:

* -Awful-Meh-Okay-Good-Great-Amazing-

*Show the year next to the title of the movie when in browsing view.

------
batmantheman
That suggested some obscure movies that I like, wow!

------
fnordprefect
Nice work. ps - millennium has two Ns in it

------
pacomerh
what database (movies API) are you hitting ?

~~~
lifwanian
Currently using iTunes but will be moving to TMDB soon

------
mcjames1984
Very impressive!

------
nkurz
My impressions in order from positive to negative are that the visual
appearance is great, the UI is OK, and the actual recommendations are poor.

For the UI, I think a verb like "Rate" would be much better than "I've seen
this". I like the in-place popup with the stars. Unlike some others, I felt
like having 4 options didn't let me distinguish between movies that were
enjoyable, and movies that I'd call my favorites.

Showing a movie summary on hover would be helpful. Clicking the image and then
going back scrolls to the top of the page if you rated the movie on the
details page. Inability to click to see details on movies already rated was
awkward, as sometimes I'd rate a movie and then be unsure if it was the movie
I thought it was. Would be nice to know if "Hide" implies "Not Interested" for
the recommendations, or just doesn't show it again.

I liked the ability to just jump in and rate things, but forced sign up to
proceed felt slimy. Better to nag here ("Your ratings might be lost if you
leave the site before you create an account") than sneak up on the user and
force them to comply. If it hadn't been a Show HN, I would have bailed here.

The real problem for me was the quality of recommendations. I rated 300+
movies, and didn't feel like I got any recommendations for movies that I felt
at all compelled to act on. I don't think any of the recommendations were ones
that I'd rate as "Amazing", and I didn't see any drop off in "likability" from
the top to middle of the list. Obviously some of this is preconception (maybe
I'd love that particular Disney film despite disliking all the others) but
preconception needs to be considered to build the user's trust.

The recommended movies that I knew about were generally in the "classic that
everyone likes but I don't care about" class. It felt like many of the movies
that I didn't know about were mostly in the "popular sequel to a movie I've
already ranked as awful". If I've already ranked multiple Batman and Superman
movies as awful, suggesting that I have a 63% match the "Batman vs Superman:
Dawn of Justice" makes it hard to trust your methods.

Much of the problems for me are probably caused by the small dataset you are
using, not just in terms of ratings but in the catalog itself. I was able to
find some of my favorite movies by searching directly for them (Primer, Adam's
Apples, Once Were Warriors), but many just weren't in your dataset (Ararat,
Metropolitan, Fast Cheap and out of Control, Incident at Loch Ness).
Bootstrapping a recommendation engine is difficult, but for me I didn't feel I
got any return on effort.

The things that would most improve the site for me would be browsing with
item-by-item similarity (people who loved this also loved), ability to
directly see ratings by people with similar tastes (needs to be opt-in),
ability to see "sandbox" recommendations (if I liked X and hated Y, and if my
wife like Y but hated Z, what movie would be both enjoy?), ability to browse
by director (I presume others would want actor), and ability to filter
recommendations by date (in my case, exclude any pre-1980 films).

Good luck!

