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Speedrating
A new feature, Speedrating, has surfaced on FilmGator. Speedrating makes rating movies in the “Movies” -screen smooth and effortless. You don’t have to go to the movie’s own page anymore to rate it - instead, you can click and rate away straight from the movie list.
Another update makes it easier to browse through your movie recommendations list. Now you can jump directly to different pages with the help of a navigation tool.
Thanks to digitaltsunami and DebLipp for feedback regarding speedrating and evanomics for writing to us about the recommendation list.
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FilmGator is getting some media coverage
What an exciting week! It started off with FilmGator getting some attention in the popular startup blog KillerStartups.com. You can check the piece out by following this link. Don’t forget to give your vote as well, so FilmGator will rise to prominence in the top lists of the blog.
So then yesterday we got a heads up that a piece on FilmGator would be published in the Nation edition of The Thrillist, “a subscription-based email newsletter and website catering to male, urban professionals in their twenties and thirties”. Joe McGauley, the editor for the Nation edition who contacted us about the piece, told us that the newsletter itself reaches hundreds of thousands of people - and in addition to that, the piece was also published at their website. A link to this piece can be found here.
Already in November ‘09 a Finnish/Northern European startup blog ArcticStartup also wrote a piece titled “FilmGator - The Last.fm For Movies”. Link here.
So what does this mean? It means we’re picking up pace. Getting some traction in the public eye is great and it means we’ll be able to tune the service to aid more and more people find answers to questions such as “What are people actually watching?” and.. “What should I watch?”.
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What should I watch?
Now that we have been maintaining our personal movie timelines, it’s finally time to reap the rewards. From now on, the data you store (or have already stored) in FilmGator will be processed in order to provide you with suggestions and recommendations for movies that might match your movie taste.
And remember: the more movies you rate, the better the algorithm will fine tune the recommendations to fit your personal taste.
Go on, try it out. Click on the new top menu link “Recommended” and get started.. and find movies worth watching.
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We are in public beta!
FilmGator has today entered the public beta phase of their development and is thus coming out of stealth mode. The core functionality of the service is now implemented and ready for use. Previous experiences have shown that the service concept works well and that it appeals to various types of users.
Now that the main framework is in place, we wish to expose the service to a broader audience to better answer the question “What are people watching?”
FilmGator is a personal movie service focusing on providing useful online tools for everyone who enjoys movies. In exchange for using FilmGator to keep track of their movie watching history, users are assisted in the discovery of new movies worth watching, in sharing their movie experiences with their friends and in better understanding their own movie taste.
FilmGator tracks movie watching history with user-specific timelines. Users’ timelines are the core of the service. In the future, FilmGator will enhance its integration with various social networking services for seamless sharing of movie experiences.
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Tagging along
Tags are a wonderful way to convey information in a simple and compact form. When quickly browsing through movies and trying to find something to watch, half a dozen well thought and descriptive tags can really make a difference when adding them up with the normally used criterion of lead actors, themes, posters etc.
In the future, tags can also help us categorize movies better and refine the analysis of a user’s taste and thus allow more and better personalized content.
So, adding tags to movies is now possible when you add a movie to your timeline. The tags appear on the movie page in weighted order and appearance reflecting the popularity of tags used.
Please remember these guidelines when adding tags:
- Separate with commas
- Only singular forms
- Only nouns
- In English only
- Preferably 1-2 words per tag
- No genres
- No actors, directors nor other makers
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Change is in the air
The first post of our reopened blog comes with exciting news! After an intense period of development, we are glad to unveil FilmGator’s new visual look. And it’s essential to note that the updates are not merely skin-deep. The upgrade comes with a bunch of new features:
- New “movies” -page, which will provide the user with a unique and intuitive movie listing tool. Scale your search by clicking on the desired genre and use the slider to specify the range of years.
- Users -section, where anyone can see the activity feed of FilmGator and the most active movie timelines.
- Top List - where users can see their rating statistics. If you can’t remember the movies you have rated with 10 stars, this is where you go.
- Watch List - where you can keep a list of movies you definitely need to see. So the next time you’re browsing through movie listings and find a few interesting ones, forget post-it notes, just click on the +Watchlist -button under the movie poster.
The official launch date is getting closer. Don’t forget to visit us - between movies.
