This article was published on January 14, 2013

Time Warner, Walmart’s Vudu, SingTel and others sign up to offer Jinni’s smart movie search engine


Time Warner, Walmart’s Vudu, SingTel and others sign up to offer Jinni’s smart movie search engine

Jinni, a ‘semantic discovery engine’ designed to help consumers find ideas for movies to watch, has announced seven new deals which will see media companies around the world offer its service to their customers.

US cable TV operator Time Warner is the biggest name amongst the new deals. They’re joined by Walmart-owned online video service Vudu; Bouygues Telecom (part of major French media and telecoms company Bouygues Group); Spain’s Prisa TV; Nordic Pay TV provider C More Entertainment; Asian giant SingTel, and South African pay TV provider Multichoice.

We first looked at Jinni back in 2009 when it entered public beta. The service uses deep metadata about movies, such as mood, tone, plot, and structure to help recommend suitable titles to users. As new titles are added to Jinni’s ‘Entertainment Genome’, they are indexed via automatic analysis of user reviews and synopses, using natural language processing.

At CES last week, the company announced a new voice-powered engine that understands natural language. This will allow users to talk to their TV and say, for example “I want to watch something funny about an obnoxious boss,” or “Is there anything witty and romantic on TV tonight?” and be served relevant recommendations.

Previously signed licensing deals for the technology include Microsoft and Belgium’s Belgacom. With so much competition for consumers’ eyeballs when it comes to offering movies these days, it makes sense for media companies to offer the most compelling product they can, and smart recommendations can be a big part of that.

It remains to be seen exactly when and how Jinni recommendations will be integrated with each of the news licensees’ services.

Image credit: Sean Gallup / Getty Images

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