Get personalized movie recommendations based on your interests

Posted on November 19, 2007 at 1:29 pm

Planning to plop down and watch a movie this weekend with a friend or significant other? Already watched all of the big blockbuster movies of the year and can’t figure out what to watch now? You can always call up friends or family and ask them what they’ve watched recently and then go and rent those movies or you can just go browsing through a Blockbuster store trying to see which movie cover looks the most interesting!

That’s two ways to go about it! Another way could be to check out a web site where you can answer a few questions about yourself and it will crunch out a list of movies that you might end up liking based on their matching algorithm.

WhatToRent is just that kind of service. The theory behind it is simple: it’s based on the relatively unknown LaBarrie Theory. This theory states that “A movie viewer emotionally interacts with a film in the same manner that they interact with other human beings.” WhatToRent asks you questions so that they can decipher a person’s personality, formulate a general model of how they react to the world, and determine their average emotional state.

After they have that information, they try to find a match of that personality to the movies in their database. It also takes into account your current mood and ideal stimulus (action, drama, love, etc) when picking out a movie for you.

Of course, you might be asking how the heck a little quiz is going to determine your personality? Well, that is obviously an issue and to try to counter how most people lie on personality tests (since they WANT to be certain way, though they may not), WhatToRent poses questions where users are put into situations they have been in before or can easily imagine.

Also, each movie in the database is analyzed as if it was an actual person! Also, movies that you have seen, that have been recommended to you and movies that you did not like are all tracked and are not considered in the analysis.

Another nice thing is that you don’t have to give up your email address or create an account, simply type in any user name to get started.

After answering my questions and putting in my current mood, WhatToRent came back to me with this recommendation:

I’ll have to check it out and see how I like it! I do like documentaries, so that’s a good sign. Also, if you don’t like the movie or have already seen it, etc, you can click the buttons on the right side.

Sounds interesting and I think I’ll try this for the next couple of movies to see how it works! Anyone else use this service? Know of a better one? Post a comment!

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