Jinni Launches the First Taste Engine for Movies and TV

YEHUD, Israel -

- Company unveils Jinni.com - a new website to help consumers find content that matches individual moods and tastes

Jinni, an innovative semantic discovery service for premium video content, today launched its consumer destination website www.jinni.com, in public beta. Jinni helps consumers find movies and TV shows that match their personal tastes and moods. The unique Taste Engine combines semantic search, personal recommendations and user profiling to help users make sense of all the movies, TV shows and webisodes out there, with links to watch online, on DVD, on TV, and in theaters. The company also unveiled new social interaction features and announced a campaign that benefits Best Friends Animal Society.

“Jinni’s consumer site is now available free of charge for users around the world. We believe that our holistic approach that combines semantic search, personalized recommendation, and detailed taste profiling, will ultimately change content selection across web, TV and mobile devices,” said Mike Pohl, Jinni CEO. “We are excited to offer users an easier, more effective, way to sift through all the entertainment choices on the market today, which is both painless and best reflects what they want to watch.”

Core features on Jinni.com include semantic search (with real results for queries like “thought-provoking sci-fi” or “action movie with a surprise twist”), personalized recommendations, and integration with leading content providers for seamless discovery from Jinni over the catalogs of Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, Hulu, LOVEFiLM, and other major entertainment providers.

Jinni is also unveiling two new aspects of its innovative approach to profiling users’ tastes - the “Movie Personality Sketch”, a visual presentation of the essentials of each user’s unique movie taste and community features. While Jinni is not a social network, social interactions are often central in choosing what to watch. Jinni’s taste profiling supports strong social features, such as descriptions of shared tastes with other users, and taste neighbors, enabling people to connect with others who share their preferences.

The Jinni service is powered by the Movie Genome, containing several thousand genes that are assigned to each title to describe mood, style, plot, setting and more, a rich alternative to the usual genre language. New titles are automatically indexed via analysis of user reviews and metadata, using a proprietary Natural Language Processing solution. This automated process offers efficiency, consistency, and a diversity of viewpoints from analyzing many user reviews. “Our automated methods allow us to index new video content rapidly,” said Yosi Glick, Co-founder and President of Jinni. “Ultimately, we see Jinni as the all-in-one gateway for video discovery, whether over the web, TV or mobile.”

Jinni is also announcing the “Watch Movies for a Change” campaign. For every sign up on the Jinni website Jinni will make a donation to the Best Friends Animal Society, the largest community-based no-kill animal rescue organization.

Jinni is a Red Herring 100 Europe winner, an OnHollywood 100 winner, a Plugg Startup Rally winner, a SXSW Web Awards nominee, a TechCrunch Europas nominee and was named the best recommendation engine on the web by CNET. In September, Jinni won the Outstanding Achievement in web development WebAward presented by the Web Marketing Association.

About Jinni Media, Ltd

Jinni Media, Ltd. is the first Taste Engine for movies and TV shows. Jinni’s semantic search and personal recommendations help users find the movies, TV shows and webisodes with a one-stop service for choosing and getting linked to watch. Jinni’s visual interface allows users to explore content intuitively while shifting the focus from what’s popular to what fits their moods and tastes. Alongside the destination website, Jinni offers APIs for Internet content providers and TV operators. Visit www.jinni.com.

Source: Jinni Media, Ltd.

Roi Ophir, VP Marketing of Jinni Media, Ltd., +44-(0)793-688-6061, roi.ophir at jinni.com