What’s wrong with genres?
October 5th, 2008 by Yosi
Genre is the entertainment industry’s main organizing concept. And Wikipedia tells us the problem: “Genres are vague categories with no fixed boundaries.”
If I say, “This is an action movie,” do you know enough to risk several hours of your time?
Without better ways to organize content, market leaders like Netflix invented a set of new genres to reflect variations on a few. Check it out to see whether the approach is easy to use. I don’t think so.
In the end, genre is good enough when professionals select content for us, but too limiting when we’re selecting for ourselves. While genre is a useful secondary concept, we need a more expressive primary language.
I believe we understand video experientially and emotionally – and that’s how we naturally look for what to watch. (e.g. “I feel like a light, upbeat movie.”) Genre just doesn’t capture that. At Jinni, we aim to create a multifaceted discovery engine that does.
Take Assassination of a High School President, which is releasing March 2009. Usually it’s catalogued as a comedy. On Jinni, it’s catalogued based on our Movie Genome. Users could come across it by searching a mix of words and phrases including Clever, Suspenseful, Cheating, Journalism, Teen Life, Neo-noir or while looking for movies that are similar to Brick, Young Sherlock Holmes, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and more.
Popularity: 3% [?]
October 8th, 2008 at 3:04 am
I don’t see genres as a way to choose, I usually go with suggestions from friends and actors I like. But your approach looks interesting, maybe it’d help me branch out!
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October 8th, 2008 at 3:58 am
i hope you’re not trying to push a mischa barton flick bc she is a horrible actress!
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October 9th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
I just went over your movie genome page and if you actually make it work then it seems like the real answer to a painful problem! I am using Pandora for over two years now and I really like what they’ve done with the Music Genome Project, with hundreds of different attributes that can separate one song from another and whether or not someone will like it based on a simple rating system. Ive been waiting for it to happen with movies and I am glad someone finally accepted the challenge! just signed up for a beta invite.
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October 9th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Semantic search is an interesting and no doubt growing field, and focusing in on film sounds promising. Recommendation tools for movies tend to be simple and imprecise, and this area could certainly benefit from innovation and development.
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