TasteKid now recommending movies, music and books to over 15,000 users

TasteKid, a stripped-down entertainment recommendation engine we first looked at two years ago, has now passed the 15,000 registers users mark. Time, we thought, for a catch up to see how the service has been doing.

With a stripped-bare interface it may not look that appealing at first, but dig inside and you’ll find this is a really smart way to discover new entertainment. Since we last looked at it, the interface has been refined and a community of users has grown up around it that makes it a little different from the competition out there.

Unlike other recommendation services like GetGlue or Last.fm, you can simply tell TasteKid that, say, ‘The Social Network’ is your favourite movie and it can recommend not only other movies, but also music, shows, books and authors that you might be interested in. You can even enter in a list of things you like for even better results.

The more you explore the site, the more it learns what you like and the better your results should be. You can help train the service by marking the things it suggests to you as ‘Like’, ‘Dislike’, ‘Save’ (to come back to it later) or ‘Meh’ (if you’re not bother either way about it).

The site has a community aspect and you can get extra inspiration from other users. Founder and CEO Andrei Oghina of Romania says he is looking to add video game recommendations (a popular request from users, apparently) and to continue honing the service’s core engine.

I’ll confess, it took me a while to get to grips with TasteKid; the design is plain and doesn’t really inspire you to dig deeper. However, if you persevere you’ll find a rich and engrossing experience that should introduce you to a whole new world of entertainment. I’ve already discovered a bunch of bands, books and films I never knew about and I’ll be back for more.