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Comment by ryan-allen | Hacker News Reader

I would pay someone like this for a quick chat on a Friday evening to help me choose a movie.

I'm old enough to remember going in to a video store and having a chat about what I should watch next.

The engaged staff quite often would send me on my way looking forward to watching the movie, and I wouldn't stop watching half way through either, I'd commit to it because it was a real recommendation by someone I talked to.

The part in the article where it was said we don't pick something to watch, we settle for something on the streaming services hits close to home for me.

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Movie Recommendation as a Service (MRaas)? Or curation - if it isn't out there yet it will come.

Something with humans, since it would be easy to imagine algorithms getting stuck in a very narrow genre (like when you give a Pandora channel too many songs and it ends up with the same 20 tracks or covers thereof). Plus giving you that commitment to see the movie through.

Or just head to reddit[1] or equivalent communities.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/MovieSuggestions

>>> Movie Recommendation as a Service (MRaas)? Or curation - if it isn't out there yet it will come.

I think it's not the same, if you are talking about an online service. It's all about the physical interactions, anticipation. Getting out of home, browsing the DVDs, bringing it back home, etc. It's the same with, e.g. books. Browsing the local bookstore compared to going through the lists in Amazon (I live in a country where it's a bit tricky to get English books and miss going to bookstores in England a lot, I can totally relate to people the author is talking about). Like the author said, it's half of the pleasure.

Humans are social animals. Not everything can be done online in an equally enjoyable manner.

I'm not sure we're social enough though.

Content industries have killed themselves by selling content as objects-you-own (or rent briefly.) Even Netflix etc work on this model. And torrents are just objects-you-steal.

If the content industries had done more to sell content as an element in a social network - share with friends/family, meet strangers, enjoy relationships of all kinds - they wouldn't be so threatened by P2P. The breakout franchises - Star Trek, Harry Potter, Star Wars - all have this personal and social element. Direct-to-DVD crap movies totally lack it.

Ironically - or maybe not - P2P provides more of that social element. People make requests, comment on uploads, build reputations, and sometimes organise private sharing clubs.

I'm sure torrenting wouldn't have become as popular without that social sharing element.

That's an interesting point. But virtually social (I just made it up, not sure if it's correct but you get the idea), I believe, is very different form physically social.

I think in case of video stores, it's quite similar to coffee shops.

I have some good quality coffee beans, a decent machine, so I can totally make coffee that's good enough to compete with most of the coffee shops for a fraction of price and time that has to be spent. That's similar to Netflix. Quick, convenient, often good enough.

But still, I like to go to a coffee shop from time to time (which is similar to going to a video store). It takes much more time, it's not as convenient (can't just go straight from bed in my underwear), but there's something rewarding about the whole thing. Dressing up, getting out of home, all these things makes this as a sort of ritual.

It already exists and it works pretty well: http://criticker.com

The predicted scores usually fall within 2-3% of what I decide to give (in a blind test, that is, I decide before looking up the prediction).

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