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Thanks for the questions. 1. A big reason more people don't rate movies is because it's unclear how or if it actually helps others (my vote doesn't matter synd

Thanks for the questions. 1. A big reason more people don't rate movies is because it's unclear how or if it actually helps others (my vote doesn't matter syndrome) or themselves (black box recommendations). 2. Validation is a big motivator, seeing that others agree with you or trust your judgement is huge. 3. Funny you should mention curating beauty, individuals will be able to share and discover based on people that share the same taste in "beauty" in the context of movies. 4. Reading tons of reviews or trying to decide if 79% on RottenTomatoes or a 3.8 stars from something else means you'll actually enjoy a movie is a painful (or ugly) experience to most people I've talked with. I assure you, @javajosh, we are taking this very seriously as a startup. The launchrock signup page is not the primary way we're finding beta testers, it's merely sufficient before we start a closed beta. Getting back to the bigger picture though, we're really building a system to efficiently share opinions and see what other people think.

byoung2 14y ago
I'm an avid moviegoer (50+ theatrical releases a year) and I completely ignore movie reviews (and it's getting this way with Yelp reviews too) because they lack context. What I mean by this is that a thumbs up/down or star rating is useless unless I have some background on the person giving the rating. For example, for someone to give Prometheus 2 stars when they haven't seen any of the Alien movies is different from an avid fan. I'd like to see a list of other movies/genres the reviewer rated, and maybe some basic demographic info before I listen to their opinion. Not sure if you have that worked into your idea yet...
- javajosh 14y ago
  Apropos of nothing, but a few times in my life I've actually gone to the theater to see a movie I knew nothing about. Nothing about the plot, the cast, etc. No trailer. It's a distinct experience, and sometimes highly pleasant. (I say "Heat" this way. Which was cool because the whole beginning of the movie is that long sequence with DeNiro stealing the ambulance, but I had no idea what the movie was, not even genre, and it was fun to try to figure out what was going on :)
  - damian2000 14y ago
    Agreed - that is an awesome experience - its happened a few times to me - Cape Fear, Training Day & The Fugitive - all great movies.
- flipside 14y ago
  Context is definitely missing from most systems and it's one of our key differentiators. Our goal is to handle all those contextual details so you don't have to.
shadowsun7 14y ago
Honestly, though, this idea seems to fall squarely into the 'yeah, I could see myself using that. Maybe' category. This isn't a huge pain point.
- flipside 14y ago
  If you take another look at my original post, my point was that I still can't articulate why this is such a huge pain. If it helps to put it in perspective, I abandoned a Nanoengineering phd doing promising work in medical diagnostics because our rating system solves an incredibly painful problem for me and I'm convinced it's a more important contribution to the world. To make a (hopefully apt) comparison, what pain point did twitter initially solve? Sharing what you had for lunch?
  - mdda 14y ago
    Not to be too adversarial, but what problem was incredibly painful to you? Couldn't choose a movie? Couldn't choose a suitable couples movie? Medical diagnostics, OTOH, could avoid a painpoint involving death - so that's an easier pitch.
    - flipside 14y ago
      See if you can follow this: Ratings are a form of feedback. Feedback helps people learn. Therefore, if we can build a better rating system that lets people share more and better feedback, then we can speed up learning and improve the flow and evolution of ideas. Also, this system wasn't designed for movies, it was designed for answers on Quora. Movies are just a better beachhead.
      - ams6110 14y ago
        I think part of your problem might be that you are solving a problem that a small group of people have, and only a small group will ever have. Most people just aren't that into movies; they decide to see a movie (or not) based on the trailer; they view movies as a way to kill two hours or a pretty safe date activity. The number of people who really have a significant "pain point" in deciding what movies to see is pretty small and likely always will be. Feel free to discount my opinion though, I haven't seen a movie in a theater in probably 5 years and basically think movies are a complete waste of time and money.
tdrake 14y ago
"we're really building a system to efficiently share opinions and see what other people think." This is exactly it - well said. And as you said, "movies are your beachhead". All you need is why what you do is different and/or better (which is still not exactly clear, unless it's finding peers). It's sometimes tough for engineers to be focused less on being precise in description, and more inspirational to goals. I have to work at it every day.

byoung2 14y ago

I'm an avid moviegoer (50+ theatrical releases a year) and I completely ignore movie reviews (and it's getting this way with Yelp reviews too) because they lack context. What I mean by this is that a thumbs up/down or star rating is useless unless I have some background on the person giving the rating. For example, for someone to give Prometheus 2 stars when they haven't seen any of the Alien movies is different from an avid fan. I'd like to see a list of other movies/genres the reviewer rated, and maybe some basic demographic info before I listen to their opinion. Not sure if you have that worked into your idea yet...

javajosh 14y ago
Apropos of nothing, but a few times in my life I've actually gone to the theater to see a movie I knew nothing about. Nothing about the plot, the cast, etc. No trailer. It's a distinct experience, and sometimes highly pleasant. (I say "Heat" this way. Which was cool because the whole beginning of the movie is that long sequence with DeNiro stealing the ambulance, but I had no idea what the movie was, not even genre, and it was fun to try to figure out what was going on :)
- damian2000 14y ago
  Agreed - that is an awesome experience - its happened a few times to me - Cape Fear, Training Day & The Fugitive - all great movies.
flipside 14y ago
Context is definitely missing from most systems and it's one of our key differentiators. Our goal is to handle all those contextual details so you don't have to.

shadowsun7 14y ago

Honestly, though, this idea seems to fall squarely into the 'yeah, I could see myself using that. Maybe' category. This isn't a huge pain point.

flipside 14y ago
If you take another look at my original post, my point was that I still can't articulate why this is such a huge pain. If it helps to put it in perspective, I abandoned a Nanoengineering phd doing promising work in medical diagnostics because our rating system solves an incredibly painful problem for me and I'm convinced it's a more important contribution to the world. To make a (hopefully apt) comparison, what pain point did twitter initially solve? Sharing what you had for lunch?
- mdda 14y ago
  Not to be too adversarial, but what problem was incredibly painful to you? Couldn't choose a movie? Couldn't choose a suitable couples movie? Medical diagnostics, OTOH, could avoid a painpoint involving death - so that's an easier pitch.
  - flipside 14y ago
    See if you can follow this: Ratings are a form of feedback. Feedback helps people learn. Therefore, if we can build a better rating system that lets people share more and better feedback, then we can speed up learning and improve the flow and evolution of ideas. Also, this system wasn't designed for movies, it was designed for answers on Quora. Movies are just a better beachhead.
    - ams6110 14y ago
      I think part of your problem might be that you are solving a problem that a small group of people have, and only a small group will ever have. Most people just aren't that into movies; they decide to see a movie (or not) based on the trailer; they view movies as a way to kill two hours or a pretty safe date activity. The number of people who really have a significant "pain point" in deciding what movies to see is pretty small and likely always will be. Feel free to discount my opinion though, I haven't seen a movie in a theater in probably 5 years and basically think movies are a complete waste of time and money.

tdrake 14y ago

"we're really building a system to efficiently share opinions and see what other people think." This is exactly it - well said. And as you said, "movies are your beachhead". All you need is why what you do is different and/or better (which is still not exactly clear, unless it's finding peers). It's sometimes tough for engineers to be focused less on being precise in description, and more inspirational to goals. I have to work at it every day.