

Rate my startup: http://WatchTh.is is a site for movie lovers - atestu

WatchThis is a website that will help you watch good movies.<p>http://watchth.is/<p>Track the movies you want to see.
Share your love for movies.
Interact with other movie lovers.
Show off your profile.<p>--<p>For now, WatchThis is a students project (I work on it with KevinBongart), but we'd love it if it became more than that, of course. We both live in Paris, France.<p> Here's the problem we're trying to fix. We all have a virtually unlimited access to thousands of movies online, and yet we're all watching a lot of crap. A lot of us have seen Transformers 2, and a lot of us still haven't see The Godfather!<p> We want to help people to easily track the movies they want to watch (a to-watch list), and share their thoughts about the ones they saw.
 On top of that, we recently launched better user profiles (with favorite movies) and the ability to follow users with an activity feed.<p> We're keeping things very simple. We do not plan on adding a way to rate movies (we think it would discourage comments) or a recommendation engine (at least in the near future); we want people to break their habits, not recommend movies they, in a way, already know.
 What do you guys think? Any advice?
======
bl4k
This is great - well done. Some feedback:

* (only one point on the design, since design feedback is so subjective - you have lots of a funny red color) - The screenshot of your site included in the site as part of the splashpage clutters the page. My eyes darted around when I first landed on the page trying to work out what was going on. Try cropping them so that it doesn't include the menus in the screenshots or better yet but some movie covers there with your 'action icons' overlayed.

* Your action icons are not consistant. Actions are 'have seen', 'want to see' and 'dont want to see' - and they are spread out. I think a more natural place for them is at the bottom, like pandora does. A lot of people will also not assume that just clickin on the cover takes you to that films record - perhaps another button 'info'

* You also have favorit - which means you have to see it first then fav it. I would just have 'favorit' as an option icon since it implies you have seen it (plus to favor a movie atm is a 3-step process).

* Take me back to the page I was on after signin (pehaps with that help as a lightbox).

* The site doesn't help you watch movies (ie. you cant view them online), which was my first impression - so the tagline is 'helps you find films to watch'.

* You have a revenue model in referral fees to amazon, netflix and the apple store.

* I would drop email (esp the gmail logo :)) and have it tweet out your 'seen's and 'likes'. Also drop email on signup (or that entire signup step) since you don't really need it and sharing over fb/tw is much better than email anyway.

* You need it inside facebook as an app

* An early site that I used to use often was <http://www.whattorent.com/>. They make recommendations based on the type of movies you like and what mood you are in. I think you should extend this to recommendations like you said, but because the web is so much more social now, and people make decisions based on what their peers/friends say and do, you can replace the 20 questions with common interests and friend recommendations. Instead of getting caught up in a /10 score, rely on ppl either liking or not liking a movie and then recommending based on what friends have liked/not liked. if you keep the app simple (ie. 'steve just watched and loved the godfather [add to mylist]') and not clutter it - this can be very successful/viral and provide good revenue.

* how about movies coming out? bookmark that you want to see a movie when it is released.

* A lot of ppl watch movies based on actors and directors (the studios know this, which is why they are both paid so much and second why so many bad movies are made with good actors). if you allow liking actors or directors, you have an instant recommendation shortcut (ie. new brad pitt movie coming out)

* If you do this right, it could become a very good imdb alternative (you should link to them btw, and possibly boxofficemojo and metacritic) - since imdb are stuck in the dark ages and haven't done a lot with the social web (their forums, where I am/was semi-active, are terrible).

* Flixster was supposed to be imdb 2.0, but I know I gave up on it because on the info end it was trying to be imdb but wasn't, and on the sharing end it was too complicated. I think there is a model where you acknowledge that you can not beat imdb in the info stakes, but you can provide the social layer in recommendations by keeping it simple.

otherwise this is great. I would use this to see what my friends have watched
and liked in twitter/facebook and would mark the movies I have seen likes and
let my friends know about it as well. a lot of ppl are manually tweeting 'just
saw the social network and did/didnt like it' so might as well wrap all that
into a nice small mini-app.

~~~
atestu
Thanks for the feedback! I'm glad you like it.

I do the design and have still a lot to learn. I'm originally a programmer.

> Take me back to the page I was on after signin

Gotcha. We'll do that.

> The site doesn't help you watch movies (ie. you cant view them online),
> which was my first impression - so the tagline is 'helps you find films to
> watch'.

Thanks a lot for this. English is our second language, and we often struggle
to express what we think in a sentence.

> You have a revenue model in referral fees to amazon, netflix and the apple
> store.

We're currently working on it.

> If you do this right, it could become a very good imdb alternative (you
> should link to them btw, and possibly boxofficemojo and metacritic) - since
> imdb are stuck in the dark ages and haven't done a lot with the social web
> (their forums, where I am/was semi-active, are terrible).

We do not plan on becoming a replacement for IMDB. We don't want to overwhelm
people with information they might not need. That said, we may add the rotten
tomatoes / IMDB / Metacritic score on movie pages. We're not sure we want a
like/dislike mechanism. We want to encourage people to comment as often as
possible. "like" has become meaningless in this day and age. Sure I "like" The
Godfather, but I also I "like" Bambi… a comment here would be much more
helpful.

~~~
bl4k
Yes 'like' may not be the correct terminology but something that indicates a
recommendation since you can also write comments that are a vote not to see
the movie

(edit: you also need to add the favorit button on the page that shows the list
of movies you have seen : <http://watchth.is/my-movies/seen>)

------
sekizaru
Wow! Nice work. I had the exact same idea awhile back and even started on a
prototype version of it. Really happy (and a bit jealous) to see it done so
well.

Some of the things that I thought would be good: _Auto-complete (with a drop-
down box) for the search box is a really nice way to search a restricted
domain like movie names. This reference was useful for
me:[http://www.webreference.com/programming/javascript/ncz/colum...](http://www.webreference.com/programming/javascript/ncz/column2/4.html)
Although the search result page is good so need to find a balance between
directing to the actual movie page and the search page.

_Combined lists with other users was the main focus I had when I was playing
with this. Good to make it more obvious that inviting your friends allows you
to do this. The example in your blog explains this well.

 _More lists of movies in the Discover Movies page. The people/genre lists are
great but there are a lot more possibilities. Examples: All Academy award
winners (by category), Box Office Top 10, Top Grossing Movies of all time, Top
movies from other Ratings sites. I think people like to be able to tick off a
complete list of something.

_ Adding to the list idea, have custom lists created by users. This would be a
good viral idea for sharing via Facebook ex. Joe's Top 10 Worst Movies of All
Time! How many have you seen?

 _Make these list pages as linkable as possible (not just on Facebook) as it
will help with ranking on the search engines.

_ The viral strategy is a very good approach, but good to have multiple
approaches. More link-worthy pages = more links = better search engine
rankings. One more example, make it very, very easy for people to add a link
to their profile on their blogs etc. There was also a post here just the other
day about startup sites to submit to. Try that as well.

 _Some options for sorting or re-arranging the movies would be nice.

_ bl4k mentioned affiliate links as a good revenue source. One other
possibility would be to pay for privacy so that you can keep your profile
private.

 _I found that there are lots of movies that I have seen that I want to see
again. I know that adding this concept complicates the UI but if you find a
nice way to do it it would be useful.

_ Include the year after the movie title on the hover overlay.

 _I was reluctant to log in using Facebook because I didn't want to post all
the movies to my profile. Might be good to include some more clarification
about what you do with a users profile (and the email address you need to
provide). I'm sure this would increase the sign up rate.

_ Are there any issues with using TMDB for some of the data? It might not be
an issue now but could become an issue if you get more popular.

 _Not sure if some of the pages already include this but a recommended list
based on selecting popular movies from other users who have seen similar
movies to you.

_ Add a link to a movie trailer site

 _I really like the implementation of "I dont want to see this movie". Good
how you just add it on the Discover page and not the individual movie page.

_ Add affiliate links to Netflix sooner rather than later. It's useful for
users and gives you a good idea how much revenue you can earn with little
effort.

Keep up the great work! Would be great to see a first x months stats post on
Hacker News sometime soon.

~~~
atestu
First off, thanks for all the ideas. I like your enthusiasm.

We'll look into auto-completion. Thanks for the article.

We love the fact that you can see what you and another user want to see. It's
a simple idea but one people love the most.

For now you can make lists by adding a tag. e.g. <http://watchth.is/tag/one-
day>. We're working on making lists more interesting (rewards when you watch a
complete list… like badges maybe? :)

Some options for sorting movies would be very nice indeed. It's on the list.

Privacy as a premium feature is a great idea. Maybe add the ability to export
your data like nithinpb suggested in the comments?

The year is on the hover overlay in the search results only for now. But yeah,
maybe we could add it everywhere.

Other HN users suggested that we be clear about our intentions regarding how
we'll use the twitter/facebook data. We'll definitely do that. In the future
you'll be able to auto-post your comments, but we'll always ask nicely first,
of course.

We have some issues from time to time with IMDB. Their CDN can be a bit
capricious and their data on movies that are not yet released is often
incomplete. That said, we don't want to focus on recently released movies but
more on movies you should have seen a long time ago. The goal is NOT to watch
recent movies but to build yourself a solid cinematographic culture (not sure
that's correct English but I'm sure you get what I'm saying).

We'll definitely add affiliate links. Amazon, iTunes, and Netflix.

We'll write a post in a few weeks just for you. Thanks again.

UPDATE: follow <http://twitter.com/WatchThis_> ;)

------
ritonlajoie
Clicky <http://watchth.is/>

------
stuartloxton
Just signed up and haven't had a full chance to go through it all however
there are three things I've found so far (neither are going to stop me from
using the service).

1) When searching for films, on the search results mousing over the films
doesn't reveal the 'add to watch' and 'mark as seen' buttons. This is slightly
annoying as I'm normally searching for a film because I know it.

2) Your whole system is designed for finding films however on the film page
all there is is a poster image, maybe include links to IMDB, Amazon but also a
trailer pulled in from youtube. If I see a film on your site at the moment I'm
going wow - let's find a trailer and then leaving the site.

3) (TINY) an autocomplete for the search would be incredibly useful.

I'll try and use the service more tonight and give some more feedback - so far
am loving it and will hopefully be using it for the foreseeable future.

~~~
atestu
1) When you search for a movie, the results are fromt tmdb.org, and it's only
when you click on it that it's added in our database. That way we don't have
to pay for a lot of storage… but you're right, it can be confusing. We'll try
to find a solution.

2) We're planning on adding trailers.

3) Maybe later.

Thanks for the feedback.

------
modulow
How about, in addition to helping people track the movies they watch, you
display information about which directors/actors/etc they seem to like best
(based on the movies they have `liked', of course...)

Also, after clicking through about 50 movies on the `Discover Movies' page, I
had `The Usual Suspects' show up about 15 times in a row on the page. Don't
get me wrong, I love the movie, just figured I'd submit this particular
behavior as a bug...:p

------
GeoffWozniak
If I sign in with my Twitter/Facebook account, what do you do with it? Will
things I say on WatchThis site show up on Twitter/Facebook? (I say this as
someone looking to sign in and even clicking the Sign In button -- there's no
indication of what will happen if I do it).

Right now it doesn't look possible to sign up _without_ a Twitter/Facebook
account.

~~~
KevinBongart
We're working on the possibility to allow the users to publish on
Facebook/Twitter their comments and favorites _if they want to_. But we
currently don't publish anything on Facebook/Twitter.

You're right, we should make it more clear.

We disabled the login/password login option because it's easier for our users
(automatic nickname suggestion, no password to remember, future
Facebook/Twitter publishing) and more interesting for us (user photo for
instance).

~~~
qjz
Do you need a Facebook/Twitter account to use the site? I have neither.

~~~
joshfinnie
I see this complaint a lot. As programmers, what do you recommend people who
are rapidly prototyping websites to do? I think using Facebook or Twitter as a
signin is the easiest way to get user administration on your site. Is there
another way people recommend?

------
nithinpb
As a movie buff, I liked your website. I have already started using it.
However, I would love to see following features: 1\. List View (I have seen
about 200 in the current list of movies. Thumbnail view means I have to scroll
a lot) 2\. Download my list of movies. 3\. Facebook app (You have already
integrated with Facebook connect)

------
chanux
Great. Just what I was looking for.

I still couldn't figure out how to fave a movie. Can't find a star in a movie
page.

Let users chose "Similar movies" to a movie and add them in recommendations,
If you are still not doing that.

PS: Found out how to fave a movie. I can only fave a movie that I've watched.
:)

------
mrlinx
Hi. Great app, but missing some essencial features: \- Import ratings/seen
movies from imdb and/or rotten tomatoes. I've seen thousands, I will just
ignore your website if I need to go through the painful process of inserting
my history. I will give you my imdb rating list url (unique) and you update my
history every day, or something. \- What about a stream with released movies,
so that I know which movies got released (scene-wise, and store-wise)? That
would be cool. www.mytvshows.org gives this for TV Series, but there are no
app like that for movies. Maybe you could do that. \- I should have more data
from outside. I need movie description, summary, director, imdb rating, rotten
rating, and some more. Cant just pick a movie based on someone elses taste.
Right?

Otherwise, works great. keep doing it.

------
mootothemax
It's a really nice service, great interface and all but _why_ are you ruining
it by forcing people to enter their email address? Kinda put me off at first
;)

What would be super cool is if you put a timer on the Discover Movies page -
if I'm busy marking movies as seen, not seen or want to see, I think it would
be cool if they stayed where they were, and only after I've stopped
interacting for a few moments does it rearrange the items. Honestly, I'm not
sure if this would be confusing as hell for users or not, but I think it'd be
worth doing a proof-of-concept for :)

~~~
atestu
The email address is for the reminders and notifications. A lot of users sign
up and forget about the site. We'd like to contact them later if they forgot
about their list of movies, for example.

Most people (that is, our friends and family) like that movies disappear on
/movies once they're added or marked as seen. They don't have to scroll!
Ticking an adding movies can become very addictive, and they like that.

~~~
mootothemax
_Most people (that is, our friends and family) like that movies disappear on
/movies once they're added or marked as seen_

Fair enough :) It's a nice feature, but when ticking off several at once, I
found it a pain to work out where the next movie I wanted to tick off had
jumped to.

------
imwilsonxu
Really into the idea of hovering and showing actions on movie posters. Elegant
and fun. How do you guys implement it, btw? jQuery plugin, or else?

However, I think there are too much text on almost every page, dizzy...

I remember Steve mentioned something like "cut off half text and do it again"
in his book "Don't Make Me Think". Maybe you wanna try it out.

Cool stuff!

~~~
atestu
Thanks! It's just a few lines of jQuery.

Thanks fo the advice about the text. We'll look into that book.

------
kilowatt
Hey! Looks great so far. I noticed a bug when I was clicking through movies:
<http://imgur.com/SX3TM.jpg>

Also, it might be nice if you could click on the "next" movie without having
to move your mouse cursor a little bit to get the "I've seen this" button to
appear. This is on Chrome that has this behavior.

~~~
KevinBongart
Thanks! We'll look into that bug and try to fix that strange hover behavior
under Webkit.

------
joebo
This is great. It would be nice to see the general availability of the movie.
I pay for an unlimited blockbuster pass and only get movies from my local
blockbuster store. It'd be neat to filter to movies that are still widely
available.

Same thing goes for filtering to the age of the movie (e.g. 'new movies' or
movies newer than 2 years old vs all movies).

------
aarongough
Looks great Atestu!

I'm curious as to where you're getting your data! I'm building out something
similar at the moment and I'm using TheMovieDb.org

I noticed you're using Rails as well so I'm just curious which solution you
chose!

~~~
KevinBongart
Hi Aaron! We're indeed using your gem, I e-mailed you about some caching
issues back in August, you fixed everything since.

Great gem, thanks for everything :-)

~~~
aarongough
Ah so you did Kevin! Sorry, I didn't tweak to the connection immediately as
the original poster had a different name...

I'm really glad to hear the Gem is working well for you! Please let me know if
you guys have any further feedback now that you're using it in production!

------
profitoftruth85
I looked up Russell Crowe but misspelled it Russel Crowe and the page says
"Oops, we couldn't find what you were looking for." you should show what my
input was so I can google it to correct or have a "did you mean..." function.

~~~
KevinBongart
Good tip, we'll look into it.

------
nickl
Nice website. I think you should consider making it a widget for the Apple tv,
Google tv, yahoo tv,... also meetup.com has movie meetups. You may want to
contact some of the leaders about your site.

~~~
atestu
Apple TV, Google TV? Why not. That's a cool idea. We hadn't thought of that.
We'll see when they release their SDKs.

------
PeterWhittaker
So far so good. But my only choices on the hover are "I want to, I don't want
to, I have". I'd like to have "Saw and liked" and "Saw and disliked". Or am I
missing something?

------
estacado
Please add the ability to edit comments. I made a spelling mistake and had to
delete the comment and repost it with corrections.

~~~
atestu
We'll definitely do that. It happens to me all the time.

------
boltofblue
What level of traffic have you received so far?

~~~
atestu
Before announcing our social features last sunday, we were in public beta,
even if we didn't call it that, because we mostly only told our friends. So we
were around 30 visits a day. hehe…

After we announced the social features we had 150 visits a day and after the
submission to news.yc, 1,500.

We have 438 users as of right now. (HN brought us ~150 users)

~~~
asdfsadrs
Awesome. Would be good to know if HN can provide a sustained user base in
itself, now you've had a little exposure.

~~~
atestu
Yeah, like I said to sekizaru we'll definitely write a post on our blog in a
couple of months.

------
jvdh
Seems a lot like Movielens: <http://movielens.umn.edu/>

------
DiabloD3
To be honest, how is this any different than Rotten Tomatoes or Netflix's
recommendation system?

~~~
KevinBongart
Our recommendation system might be less powerful, but we think it's simpler,
more easy to use because we only implement features we feel are useful.

------
est
1\. search is not permalink

2\. search could not be sorted by release date

------
chriswesallen
Looks pretty cool....did you write it in rails?

~~~
atestu
Yup. Rails hosted on Heroku. Using ruby-tmdb to access themoviedb.org

Heroku is amazing.

------
boltofblue
What kind of traffic are you getting so far?

