It’s hard for computers to give good recommendations for movies or music. That is why the recommendation systems that tend to work on the Web include a human or social element (see eMusic). Clerk Dogs is trying to do that for movie recommendations. Its database includes about 5,000 movies, all categorized by film buffs, including some former video store clerks.
For each movie, Clerk Dogs produces slider ratings on things like character depth, complexity, cinemotography, violence, black humor, and suspense. Then it generates a list of other movies that score similarly across the same attributes. If you want more matches that correlate with high suspense or action, move those sliders to the right.
A spot check of a few recommendations shows that Clerk Dogs holds some promise. Put in the Heat, and it comes back with 43 recommendations, including Ronin, American Gangster, and The Departed. Not exactly surprising, but on the mark. Put in Frost/Nixon, and you get back All The President’s Men (obvious), as well as Good Night, And Good Luck (not so obvious).
Clerk Dogs CEO Stuart Skorman was the founder of Reel.com, which he sold to Hollywood Entertainment for $100 million during the 1.0 bubble. He hopes to sell access to the Clerk Dogs recommendation engine to other movie sites and retailers.
So, how much traffic will they lose from this post?
How many people are like me?
Mmm, that service could be interesting. CLICK. Mmm, nice simple front page – asks for movie, think, enter movie. CLICK. Register! CLOSE WINDOW
Will people ever learn?
Thank you very much for your comments. We have taken away the registration requirement. Please enjoy the site and we look forward to receiving more of your feedback.
- The ClerkDogs Team
Cheers to you Mary! I think you adequately addressed Simon’s question, “Will be ever learn?”
Gradual engagement is a concept that is still not intuitive to many on the web. I hate when my competitors figure this out
Mistake n°1: obligated registration in order to even try the service.
I was interested in it, but I closed the tab after it asked me for my email address. Too bad.
Why such an aversion to giving an email address? I operate a similar concept – focused on wine. Our recommendations improve dramatically with time, so we do require you to open an account.
We have toyed with using “guest accounts” that you can roll into a real account if you like the service, but haven’t implemented it. Do you really think this would really benefit us in better traffic?
Our recommendations improve dramatically with time, so we do require you to open an account.
Non-sequitur. What’s the real reason you require registration?
human analysis isnt scalable.
Steve, many people learned to not give away their email address so easily because of spam. I’m not saying that your service has something to do with it, but some do, and it’s easier to go away than guessing “should I give them my email or not?”. For many people email is very personal, like a cellphone number.
I’m just trying to help so here are my 2cents about what your visitors will do in this case:
- they will go away because they don’t want to give away their email address
- they give you a fake one (or some temporal one they use just for this kind of stuff), so at the end of the day What’s the point?
- they give you their real email address
My advise would be: find a way to make your service be registration-free for basic usage (like movie recommendation) and optionally ask for email for some premium features (something that I think would be cool is weekly email movie recommendation).
Have a nice day,
Dias
looks like the guys are reading comments:)
now it gives matches without registration.
I tried to find matches for Snatch and looks like most of the movies suggested are real matches.
would be better if they put some imdb data next to the matches. would make it easier to decide if you really want to watch that.
I tried this out, it sucks. It didn’t give me any good or relevant results for 18 different searches. Nice job, lame site.
This reminds me a lot of ways of what the guys at Pandora are doing, EXCEPT that this relies on the sites users to provide the movie DNA. Maybe if you had some “experts” supplementing the DNA info it would make them a little more interesting (or at least less generic and obvious). Like the idea though, will be very interesting to see if people are a) willing to take the time to review moves (what’s the incentive?) and b) if the reviews will get better or worse with the wisdom of the crowd.
Mike,
Thanks for your feedback. The movie DNA is provided by our movie experts, rather than users. Mash It results are generated using the DNA ratings, while Match It recommendations are individually hand-picked by our team of clerks. During beta, the Crime/Suspense genre works best for Mash It. We are constantly expanding the database.
Thanks, ClerkDogs Team
Could you all possibly partner with the small businesses still running video store operations? Some easy way for these “mom and pops” to integrate with your site? We still have a very large locally owned shop that beat out Hollywood Video (HV even put in one of their ‘flagship’ stores that carried all sorts of flicks…it failed). The local store’s site sucks though.
coldbrew,
ClerkDogs comes right from the physical video stores that our founder used to own in New England. We would love to help video stores. We are a new small company and our plans for the future our still uncertain. We will keep you posted!
- The ClerkDogs Team
@Simon @Dias – I agree about not having to register. I closed the window too. Cool concept, but I won’t know for sure until it’s available to try out first.
@Steve – I think you’d have more “window shoppers” and “walk-in” business without requiring registration first. It’s just like in the “real world” – who wants to give a salesman personal information before they know the product works? By registering first, I’ve just given the internet equivalent of my phone number to a complete stranger (for them to do with whatever they’d like, mind you) whom I have no reason to trust!
Trustworthiness and a relationship can be built by giving without expecting anything in return – i.e. free samples. In the real world, you wouldn’t share personal information with a stranger and you shouldn’t do it online either. Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to talk to strangers?!
But, alright, so maybe whatever service is interesting enough for me to give them my information/trust up front. What happens when I give it a go and it turns out I’m actually disinterested? I’ve just given personal information to a company I’ll never do business with – that’s not mutually beneficial.
What is mutually beneficial is users/clients/customers who want to be part of the whole operation and are involved and excited. These are the people who will create new business via friends, family and/or blog subscribers, Facebook friends, MySpace friends, LinkedIn connections, etc. –people who trust your customer for one reason or another.
Another retail analogy: it’s the difference between window shopping, walk-in business and destination/recommendation shopping. If the door is locked and there are no windows, how far am I willing to go to get inside and see what they’re selling?
Jinni.com much?
Oh, and you guys lost me completely by recommending “The Break-Up” when searching for “Eternal Sunshine…”
that makes sense. they are both terrible movies.
http://www.cler...nd-2004/matches
It explains that the Break Up is “more mainstream” and you have to admit that they do have similar themes even if they are executed in a very different way…(aesthetically, etc).
I hope this site takes off! Most other movies sites just recommend on genre and not theme, etc.
Awesome site, I was impressed by the quality of the suggestions for the searches I performed. I wish you the best!
The Break Up makes perfect sense with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind since they are both dealing with the issues surrounding a bad break up. Although ESSM is a much better movie, the themes are very similar.
More cushion for the pushing imo.
“Nanocrowd Movie Search: A New Recommendation Approach.”
http://primetim...search-new.html
Small themed groupings of movies (like the movie picked) are included. They are called nanogenres.