

Rate my startup - deegr - Guillaumedm

Hi everyone,<p>With a couple of Uni friends, we have been working on http://www.deegr.com for the past few months; it's a cultural recommendation engine that lets you find people with similar tastes on the whole Web.<p>From the landing page, just rate 5 movies you either like or hate. deegr instantly searches through over 60k+ user profiles we've referenced on websites such as IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, or AlloCine (and deegr itself!), to show you the 30 people that best match your tastes and give you inspiration based on the rest of what they've also liked. 
The more you rate, the better the accuracy of your search!<p>You can also follow your own Facebook/Twitter crowd, share micro-reviews, interact with other deegr members and a few other things after a free, flash-registration.<p>The purpose of this project is to create a generic recommendation engine for pretty much anything that has ratings (or the equivalent) on the Web.<p>We'd love to have your thoughts and suggestions on it: the idea, the UI, the quality of the recommendations, the speed of the engine... Anything.<p>If you also have suggestions regarding blogs &#38; sites we should get in touch with so they can spread the word about deegr, don't hesitate!<p>Thanks all,<p>The deegr Team
http://www.deegr.com<p>ps: other medias (music, books, videogames...), the API and mobile apps are on the roadmap; just give us a few months!<p>EDIT: Please note that we're currently working on a small feature that will enable you to minimize mainstream movies in a single click, in our recommendations! We know you've most probably seen Shawshank Redemption and the Godfather ;)
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JoshTriplett
A few quick observations:

At one point, the text at the top started saying "Rate NaN movies".

You seem to start off with extremely popular movies. Those movies seem
unlikely to generate a range of ratings. You might consider starting off with
movies that a large number of people have rated but which polarize people,
which would help differentiate people sooner and improve the quality of the
circles.

At one point the "I didn't see this movie" links became french: "Je n'ai pas
vu ce film".

In one category, I hit "I didn't see this movie", and later the same movie
showed up in another category.

I found it slightly odd that the rating scale goes from 0.5 to 5 stars, rather
than 0 to 5 stars.

I rated all the films deegr showed in the first batch, and they all
disappeared, but now I don't see an obvious next step. The rotating deegr
explanation banners at the top mention something about "refine your search
after rating a few movies", and shows an icon for that, but I don't see that
icon anywhere in the interface. I finally found that clicking on the "Deegr
Circle" dropdown, then "Deegr Circle" under that, led me to something useful.

Once I get to the mode showing a circle of other people, I don't see any
options for "I haven't seen this film" anymore.

Once you start recommending a circle of people, and recommending other films
liked in that circle, that encourages rating those films too, which seems
unlikely to change the circle.

I'd love to see an explanation of the name. Best guess: modified form of
"dig"?

~~~
Guillaumedm
Thanks a lot Josh, that's some heavy feedback.

We'll take some time this week to search & fix the translations you reported.

As for the mainstream recommendation, I've edited the original post: we'll
soon let you users get rid of mainstream recommendations in a single click.

Regarding the scale starting at 0 instead of 0.5, that's because you have to
give them a .5, that's for several reasons: for example, you wouldn't know if
you've rated the movie a 0 or not when clicking somewhere left of the stars.
Also we think it's more disgraceful to get a 0.5 than a 0. And other reasons.

Regarding "but now I don't see an obvious next step.", this sounds weird; you
should normally have been redirected to a search result (a Circle) straight
out of rating 5 movies, no more. Isn't that what happened?

There's no other "I haven't seen this movie" once you land your first search
Circle, because there's no point. Either you haven't seen it and it stays as a
recommendation (which you can add to your deegList), or you really don't want
to see it and you can therefore Mute it with the "-" sign.

Yep, deegr, derived from digging. It's quick, catchy, simple, easy to type and
to say... And it was available :/

~~~
JoshTriplett
I don't think an option to hide mainstream recommendations does quite what I
want. That would help when looking for more out-of-the-way hidden gems for
recommendations, but it doesn't help when trying to rate films I've seen to
improve the quality of my circle. I'd still suggest that you propose rating
movies that polarize people heavily, as a partitioning technique. This works
both in the general case (show me movies that many people rated, but which get
both very high and very low ratings frequently), and in the specific case
based on the contents of your circle (help me rate movies that would
differentiate me from members of my current circle, not just movies that would
reinforce my circle).

As for 0.5 versus 0, fair enough; it just seemed a bit quirky. :)

> Regarding "but now I don't see an obvious next step.", this sounds weird;
> you should normally have been redirected to a search result (a Circle)
> straight out of rating 5 movies, no more. Isn't that what happened?

Nope; I kept rating movies, until eventually all of the initial sets of films
disappeared, and nothing else happened.

> There's no other "I haven't seen this movie" once you land your first search
> Circle, because there's no point. Either you haven't seen it and it stays as
> a recommendation (which you can add to your deegList), or you really don't
> want to see it and you can therefore Mute it with the "-" sign.

Fair enough. However, I wonder: do you take "mute" into account when doing
recommendations, or just hide films? In particular, I see a number of films
for which I could either rate them 0.5 ("I can tell from the trailer that this
will suck") or mute them ("I guess I should reserve judgement, but I don't
ever want to see it").

One more misplaced translation: "Retour en haut".

~~~
Guillaumedm
Polarizing the ratings seems like a nice way to quickly make them go their own
way, indeed. With our algorithm, rating 'not popular' movies works just as
well actually; but maybe we should also show movies people shoulDN'T like? I
had given thoughts about it, but the layout is already kind of 'full', so it's
not very easy. We'll definitely look into it though; thanks a lot.

No, we don't currently take into consideration movies that have been muted or
added to the deegList, but just like the polarization, we've already given
thoughts about it (especially for this) and will probably take it into account
in the next algorithm update. Thanks again ;)

~~~
JoshTriplett
You might find this useful: <http://times.usefulinc.com/2007/03/06-sparklines>

Note the second and third cases under "middle ranking". That seems like a
category of films you should present to help add more nuance to a user's
ratings and circle.

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arkitaip
I love recommendation engines so your service sounds really interesting. Some
impressions:

* I LOVE that you don't require a sign-up to get started. The fact that I can start rating right off the front page is equally good.

* I don't grok how the right side "Recommendation Summary" widget works. I rate stuff and they... disappear? Wait, aren't these supposed to be recommendations in the first place? So where are the ratings (starts)? Also, what's the relation between this widget and the content to the left (my "circle")?

* To the left, I'm seeing some dude's ratings. Maybe you should change the graphics for dude's ratings and my ratings? Because both are in blue.

* As I mention I already use several recommendation engines. I would really love to submit my Criticker profile page and have the ratings imported. Because you know I have spent hours rating stuff over the course of several years.

* I don't see the purpose of "You both rated : (20)" In the left content pane. Also, it takes up a lot of visual space.

* This is pretty fun to use.

* Some of the UI - sub-items of the Movies tab; the hover for the Register link - are still in French.

* I've seen most of the recs I'm getting. Again, if there was a way to import ratings from other sites it would make a huge difference.

~~~
Guillaumedm
Hey Arkitaip, thanks for that review! So, in order: * yes thanks, we had "keep
it simple" in mind ;)

* 2 and * 3: the left side shows your different matchs' ratings (what they've liked, what they haven't). The right side shows a reorganized summary of all the movies liked by the 30 people whose tastes best match yours. It's all explained when you hover your cursor over the top of that column ;)

* Yes, we've thought about that. I can't tell yet if we're going to work on that soon or not; it would be pretty easy since we've crawled the profiles already, but that's kind of unfair to the other websites, it feels like we'd be stealing profiles - whereas right now, we only reference them.

* 'You both rated' helps you have a quick glance at how well you and the person in question have in common. We've tried without it, and quite frankly, it's better with; juste to know on what kind of movies you both match. The number in parenthesis is the total number of movies in common with similar ratings.

* ^^

* Woopsie! We'll fix that asap!

* Yeah, it's not the first time we're told the Recommendation Summary shows some mainstream movies. Well that's because they've liked a lot, so pragmatically, we HAVE to recommend them; and if you liked/hated them, rate them away!

HOWEVER please note, we're only weeks away from an update that will allow you
to hide Mainstream recommendation in a single click, so please be patient!

Thanks again for that full review! And don't forget: the more you rate, the
better the accuracy.

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coffee
FYI, you might want to check out this:

[http://www.betabeat.com/2011/10/26/quit-netflix-meet-the-
net...](http://www.betabeat.com/2011/10/26/quit-netflix-meet-the-netlix-
predictor-from-hunch/)

I've just now been using it, and it's pretty interesting...

------
coffee
I like it!

I actually found a new movie that related to the ratings I supplied, nor have
I seen it before, good stuff.

Here are some thoughts:

1\. I've feed Netflix a lot of my data over the years. A link from each movie
to a Netflix result would show how Netflix rates it related to me. Maybe you
don't want to push people to Netflix, but it's useful information to me.

2\. I don't really care about the "people" I care about the movies. As I click
through the results I see a lot of duplicate movies under different people.
Remove or leave the people category, I don't care, but strip away the
duplicate results...

All in all I find it useful.

~~~
Guillaumedm
Thanks coffee, glad you like it.

1\. Oh yes we want to push Netflix! We're just a small french project and
Netflix has not invaded us as of this date; and is unlikely to do so for
sometime, actually. I know what you're talking about and we'll see how/if we
can implement it.

2\. Well that's a bummer, deegr's all about finding others like you ^^ If we
only recommended movies without telling you why you should like them, we'd
ressemble every other engine out there! Don't you like knowing you have taste-
mates out there?

~~~
coffee
Yea I guess it would be interesting to know I have taste mates out there. But
I feel like that's the bigger picture, once I regularly engage with you
application. My perspective is one of, what do I get out of this right now,
first time using it, that brings me back to enjoying the people matching in
the future... Just my 2 cents...

Cool stuff though. I really like where your going with it. I instantly found
it useful to find a new movie which is what is the most important to me now (
tomorrow following taste mates may trump that )

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pxtreme75
Generic comment: I like it a lot! Good UI, fast engine, good results

Secondary comments/suggestions:

1\. After I voted a few movies I could see a list of similar people and a
number of suggested movies. I could also see the movies other people liked,
their votes and vote for them. As an UI suggestion make sure that when I put
my mouse over another user's vote I understand that I can vote -- currently is
not obvious

2.There is some french here and there...

3.I would love to see some simple "Watch this..." screen that is centered more
to suggested movies and less on similar people. After all I am here to find
movies!

~~~
Guillaumedm
Hey, thanks a lot for the boost! 1\. Mmmm we should probably change de stars'
color when hovering over them, to make people understand that they're in
charge atm 2\. Yes, I've read that a lot today. My engrish isn't so bad I
guess, but it seems like after countless sneezy testings, I've missed a few
trads... 3\. Again, problem is that we've already focused a lot on movies not
people; if we focus even less on the people, then they will almost disappear,
and deegr will lose its special ingredient (ie. finding people that are like
you).

Maybe you will actually find it useful to find people like you when you can
find people like you from your town/age/sex/opposite sex... See what I mean?
^^

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marquis
This is great, but in spending about 10 minutes on it I only see movies I've
already seen - almost every film I came across in those 10 minutes is not new
to me and I lost interest. With 100 years of film history to watch, thousands
of indie films, foreign films - I want to know what is highly recommended of
something more obscure that is worth my time to find. I guess this is just a
start for you, it works well otherwise and I'll check back a later time to see
if it works well for books also (I know less about good books than movies so
maybe this will be more interesting for me).

~~~
Guillaumedm
Thanks marquis; I've just edited the main message to say that we're already
working on a feature that will enable you to remove mainstream movies in a
single click. So please stay tuned, it should be up within a couple of weeks
at most :)

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DanBC
I see lots of people giving a full 5 stars. Would results be better if people
were more accurate, giving 3.5; 4; 4.5 or 5 stars?

What happens if you ask people to rate 10 movies with either a thumbs up or
thumbs down? Would that give better results?

It's quite interesting, although I could see more use for it as part of other
websites. EG: dating websites could use the tech to match people?

Good Luck though!

~~~
Guillaumedm
Thanks Dan!

Well, we will see how things evolve. You are correct in that it seems like
people are more likely to give 5/5's than lower ratings; but I guess that's
just one way of matching people: they can be similar in their way of rating
things (they could love everything or be big time haters), deegr will match
them. Also, it's not like we can't interpret ratings over 3/5 as thumbs-ups
and lower ratings as thumbs-down; we can still change, only time will tell us
what the best scale is. As of now, the current system seems to do a great job.

And yes, of course, we're thinking a lot about implementing it on other
websites; we're already working on an API ;)

Thanks for the feedback!

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JoshTriplett
As far as I can tell, I can't get from a movie shown under "so-and-so also
rated" on the left to the mute button. Mute doesn't appear when hovering over
the movie, and clicking on the movie opens a panel on the right which doesn't
have the mute button either. And the same goes for movies I search for;
searching opens the same panel on the right, which still doesn't have the mute
button.

~~~
Guillaumedm
Well, since muting is not yet taken into account in the algorithm, there's no
point in muting a movie you and someone have in common, or a movie that you
would directly make a search for.

~~~
JoshTriplett
Muting still has a useful purpose: I don't want to see the movie in the list
anymore, even if I have it in common with someone.

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rapcal
I've played quickly with your webapp and I really enjoyed it. I think the
functionality is great and the results are pretty accurate! I was really
impressed.

I would only suggest that you give people the option to rank more movies
before building the circle if they want to. I think I could have gotten even
better results if I could've reviewed more films.

Hope you succeed!

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jonpaul
My first impression: what problem does this solve? Why do I want to connect
with people with similar movie interests?

After I started rating movies that I've seen, I could see the value in the
recommendation engine aspect...

I'm not a fan of the name either... it's not memorable.

Also, it seems that French text shows up every now and then.

Good start, keep iterating.

~~~
Guillaumedm
Well, thanks for the support;

Problem solved is giving people a reason to actually trust the recommendations
made by recommendation engines. We have never known why Amazon (IMDb etc) was
recommending us some movies rather than some others. There's a very strong
algorithm behind these recommendations, but we believe that humanized
recommendation engine is better because you can actually ask the person why
he/she liked a movie and would recommend it. It's kind of like Aardvark:
sometimes you want a person, not a web page, to answer your question.

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JoshTriplett
The custom scrollbar on the recommendation summary loses the un-click
sometimes, and keeps dragging as I move the mouse even with the button up. It
also requires much more precision to grab with the mouse. Please, consider
just using the browser's native scrollbars there.

~~~
Guillaumedm
I see what you mean. No one has complained so far among our current users, but
you're probably right that it can be annoying. We'll look for a way to fix
that issue.

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JoshTriplett
The three icons below films in the "so-and-so also rated" section, which look
like a plus, a TV, and a speech bubble, don't immediately suggest obvious
functions to me. You might consider either adding floating help for those
icons, or making them more obvious.

~~~
Guillaumedm
Roger that; we'll make tooltips I guess.

~~~
JoshTriplett
One-word summaries would suffice, actually, now that I've managed to figure
out what they do. How about "deegList", "Trailer", and "Review"?

~~~
Guillaumedm
Once you know what thr icons are about, it's better to have icons; less test,
visually more appealing.

How about that? At first it shows-up like words; once you've clicked one, it
only ever comes back as an icon. ?

~~~
JoshTriplett
That would make it hard to get used to the interface. If you're really
attached to the icons, I'd suggest leaving them, and just providing the text
as tooltips.

Also, clicking on it once doesn't mean a user will know or remember what it
does. :)

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JoshTriplett
Something about the login form causes Firefox to not successfully fill in the
previously remembered username and password. That makes it quite inconvenient
to log in (have to go copy the password out of the password manager).

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Mutli
After a few rates I saw "Rate NaN movies". Not good. Then it wasn't clear that
I had to click on "deegr circle" to find others that matched me. Finally, I
don't think that half stars add any value. Keep it simple.

~~~
JoshTriplett
I found half-stars rather useful; they made it more natural to quickly give an
appropriate rating. I frequently find that half-stars make me less inclined to
over-rate something; 4.5 contains mostly stuff I would otherwise have rated 5,
and 3.5 contains mostly stuff I would rated 4, as well as a few things I would
have reluctantly rated 3.

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jordaninternets
I love this! I would say to focus more on the recommendations and see if you
can integrate services like Netflix, Hulu, etc so I can see a movie that I
might like and immediately go watch it.

~~~
Guillaumedm
Yep, noted; we'll try to work on that. Thanks

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AshtonFun
I rate a movie and after the "I didn't see this movie label" changes to "Je
n'ai pas vu ce film", which is obviously fine for me as I know some french,
but ... you go it.

~~~
Guillaumedm
Hey Ashton, thanks for letting us know. We'll look into that asap. Did you
like the rest?

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JoshTriplett
Sometimes the hovering image of a film doesn't match the title and the imdb
entry; for instance, the film "super" showed an image of "Superman/Batman
Apocalypse".

~~~
Guillaumedm
Oh, odd; we'll fix that. Thanks

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rachelbythebay
It seems to work. I just don't know that I care about the results. This may
say more about me than it does about your service, however!

~~~
Guillaumedm
Haha, well I guess what's to remember is that it works ^^

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JoshTriplett
A few times now, I've refreshed and gotten a recommendation smumary with
ratings, star icons, +, and -, but no titles.

~~~
Guillaumedm
What browser are you using please?

~~~
JoshTriplett
Firefox 7.

~~~
Guillaumedm
Ok, tested: something's wrong with Firefox. I have the same issue. That's
since our last update, which was yesterday.

Looking into fixing this asap. Thanks

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JoshTriplett
Why can I rate movies without logging in, but not add movies to the mute list
without logging in?

~~~
Guillaumedm
Hey Josh. We prefer to have registered users than visitors, so that you too
can be matched and in order to grow the userbase. That's why we've put some
features only to be used after registration. On top of that, these feats are
useless as a visitor; the muting will be forgotten when you come back after
48hrs.

It takes literally no more than 10 seconds to create an account, you should
give it a go ;)

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JoshTriplett
Would you consider supporting BrowserID to log in?

~~~
Guillaumedm
It's a possibility, but I doubt so. The current system would be enough I
guess, and we've already got a lot to do/manage/fix... Well, actually, you sir
just gave us a lot to do ^^

