Justin Cox Presents:

Jinni: The Movie Genome Project

Ok this is really cool. There’s a new website/service in closed (see private) beta that claims to be to movies what Pandora is to music. For those completely unaware, Pandora is the awesome music service that creates personalized internet radio stations based on a particular song or artiest. It uses the “music genome project” to analyze similarities and then provide content the listener would like. Enter Jinni. It’s the same idea except for movies.

Jinni uses the “movie genome” to categorize movies based on plots, moods, styles, genres… pretty much everything you can think off. You can take a few tests to determine what your movie watching preferences are — I scored high on Hero, Individualist and Alternate Realist. You can also rate movies, much in the way that Netflix rates movies, to better help recommendations. But the real magic is in the search engine.

Jinni in action.

If you’re looking for an indie postapocalyptic, enter that into the search field. If you’re more into a female super hero flick, try that. Or maybe a contemporary foreign thriller with subtitles is up your alley? The point is, if you can dream it up you can search it and find something to suit your taste.

Since Jinni is still in beta, it’s not a perfect system. There are still a number of movies missing, or missing classifications and tags. It’s an ambitious task, to categorize all the movies and TV shows out there, but if it gets pulled off this system will be awesome. Easily finding movies based on taste or mood is a lot better then asking the guy at Blockbuster what he recommends. Even better, each movie page provides links to Amazon, Blockbuster, Netflix and Movielink so you can get the movie. The only thing missing would be an iTunes buy now link.

Jinni is a pretty cool concept that will hopefully turn into a pretty cool service. If you want to get in on the beta, I’ve got 10 invites available. First come, first served. Just leave a comment and it’ll be sent to the email address you use.

Here’s to sweet recommendations!