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Rate my startup: http://WatchTh.is is a site for movie lovers

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Rate my startup: http://WatchTh.is is a site for movie lovers

#1
WatchThis is a website that will help you watch good movies.

http://watchth.is/

Track the movies you want to see. Share your love for movies. Interact with other movie lovers. Show off your profile.

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For now, WatchThis is a students project (I work on it with KevinBongart), but we'd love it if it became more than that, of course. We both live in Paris, France.


Here's the problem we're trying to fix. We all have a virtually unlimited access to thousands of movies online, and yet we're all watching a lot of crap. A lot of us have seen Transformers 2, and a lot of us still haven't see The Godfather!


We want to help people to easily track the movies they want to watch (a to-watch list), and share their thoughts about the ones they saw. 
On top of that, we recently launched better user profiles (with favorite movies) and the ability to follow users with an activity feed.


We're keeping things very simple. We do not plan on adding a way to rate movies (we think it would discourage comments) or a recommendation engine (at least in the near future); we want people to break their habits, not recommend movies they, in a way, already know. 
What do you guys think? Any advice?

Re: Rate my startup: http://WatchTh.is is a site for movie lovers

#3
This is great - well done. Some feedback:

* (only one point on the design, since design feedback is so subjective - you have lots of a funny red color) - The screenshot of your site included in the site as part of the splashpage clutters the page. My eyes darted around when I first landed on the page trying to work out what was going on. Try cropping them so that it doesn't include the menus in the screenshots or better yet but some movie covers there with your 'action icons' overlayed.

* Your action icons are not consistant. Actions are 'have seen', 'want to see' and 'dont want to see' - and they are spread out. I think a more natural place for them is at the bottom, like pandora does. A lot of people will also not assume that just clickin on the cover takes you to that films record - perhaps another button 'info'

* You also have favorit - which means you have to see it first then fav it. I would just have 'favorit' as an option icon since it implies you have seen it (plus to favor a movie atm is a 3-step process).

* Take me back to the page I was on after signin (pehaps with that help as a lightbox).

* The site doesn't help you watch movies (ie. you cant view them online), which was my first impression - so the tagline is 'helps you find films to watch'.

* You have a revenue model in referral fees to amazon, netflix and the apple store.

* I would drop email (esp the gmail logo :)) and have it tweet out your 'seen's and 'likes'. Also drop email on signup (or that entire signup step) since you don't really need it and sharing over fb/tw is much better than email anyway.

* You need it inside facebook as an app

* An early site that I used to use often was http://www.whattorent.com/. They make recommendations based on the type of movies you like and what mood you are in. I think you should extend this to recommendations like you said, but because the web is so much more social now, and people make decisions based on what their peers/friends say and do, you can replace the 20 questions with common interests and friend recommendations. Instead of getting caught up in a /10 score, rely on ppl either liking or not liking a movie and then recommending based on what friends have liked/not liked. if you keep the app simple (ie. 'steve just watched and loved the godfather [add to mylist]') and not clutter it - this can be very successful/viral and provide good revenue.

* how about movies coming out? bookmark that you want to see a movie when it is released.

* A lot of ppl watch movies based on actors and directors (the studios know this, which is why they are both paid so much and second why so many bad movies are made with good actors). if you allow liking actors or directors, you have an instant recommendation shortcut (ie. new brad pitt movie coming out)

* If you do this right, it could become a very good imdb alternative (you should link to them btw, and possibly boxofficemojo and metacritic) - since imdb are stuck in the dark ages and haven't done a lot with the social web (their forums, where I am/was semi-active, are terrible).

* Flixster was supposed to be imdb 2.0, but I know I gave up on it because on the info end it was trying to be imdb but wasn't, and on the sharing end it was too complicated. I think there is a model where you acknowledge that you can not beat imdb in the info stakes, but you can provide the social layer in recommendations by keeping it simple.

otherwise this is great. I would use this to see what my friends have watched and liked in twitter/facebook and would mark the movies I have seen likes and let my friends know about it as well. a lot of ppl are manually tweeting 'just saw the social network and did/didnt like it' so might as well wrap all that into a nice small mini-app.

Re: Rate my startup: http://WatchTh.is is a site for movie lovers

#4
It's a really nice service, great interface and all but why are you ruining it by forcing people to enter their email address? Kinda put me off at first ;)

What would be super cool is if you put a timer on the Discover Movies page - if I'm busy marking movies as seen, not seen or want to see, I think it would be cool if they stayed where they were, and only after I've stopped interacting for a few moments does it rearrange the items. Honestly, I'm not sure if this would be confusing as hell for users or not, but I think it'd be worth doing a proof-of-concept for :)

Re: Rate my startup: http://WatchTh.is is a site for movie lovers

#5
post #3

This is great - well done. Some feedback: * (only one point on the design, since design feedback is so subjective - you have lots of a funny red color) - The screenshot of your site included in the site as part of the splashpage clutters the page. My eyes darted around when I first landed on the page trying to work out what was going on. Try cropping them so that it doesn't include the menus in the screenshots or bet…

Thanks for the feedback! I'm glad you like it.

I do the design and have still a lot to learn. I'm originally a programmer.

> Take me back to the page I was on after signin

Gotcha. We'll do that.

> The site doesn't help you watch movies (ie. you cant view them online), which was my first impression - so the tagline is 'helps you find films to watch'.

Thanks a lot for this. English is our second language, and we often struggle to express what we think in a sentence.

> You have a revenue model in referral fees to amazon, netflix and the apple store.

We're currently working on it.

> If you do this right, it could become a very good imdb alternative (you should link to them btw, and possibly boxofficemojo and metacritic) - since imdb are stuck in the dark ages and haven't done a lot with the social web (their forums, where I am/was semi-active, are terrible).

We do not plan on becoming a replacement for IMDB. We don't want to overwhelm people with information they might not need. That said, we may add the rotten tomatoes / IMDB / Metacritic score on movie pages. We're not sure we want a like/dislike mechanism. We want to encourage people to comment as often as possible. "like" has become meaningless in this day and age. Sure I "like" The Godfather, but I also I "like" Bambi… a comment here would be much more helpful.

Re: Rate my startup: http://WatchTh.is is a site for movie lovers

#6

It's a really nice service, great interface and all but why are you ruining it by forcing people to enter their email address? Kinda put me off at first ;) What would be super cool is if you put a timer on the Discover Movies page - if I'm busy marking movies as seen, not seen or want to see, I think it would be cool if they stayed where they were, and only after I've stopped interacting for a few moments does it rea…

The email address is for the reminders and notifications. A lot of users sign up and forget about the site. We'd like to contact them later if they forgot about their list of movies, for example.

Most people (that is, our friends and family) like that movies disappear on /movies once they're added or marked as seen. They don't have to scroll! Ticking an adding movies can become very addictive, and they like that.

Re: Rate my startup: http://WatchTh.is is a site for movie lovers

#7
post #5
post #3

This is great - well done. Some feedback: * (only one point on the design, since design feedback is so subjective - you have lots of a funny red color) - The screenshot of your site included in the site as part of the splashpage clutters the page. My eyes darted around when I first landed on the page trying to work out what was going on. Try cropping them so that it doesn't include the menus in the screenshots or bet…

Thanks for the feedback! I'm glad you like it. I do the design and have still a lot to learn. I'm originally a programmer. > Take me back to the page I was on after signin Gotcha. We'll do that. > The site doesn't help you watch movies (ie. you cant view them online), which was my first impression - so the tagline is 'helps you find films to watch'. Thanks a lot for this. English is our second language, and we often…

Yes 'like' may not be the correct terminology but something that indicates a recommendation since you can also write comments that are a vote not to see the movie

(edit: you also need to add the favorit button on the page that shows the list of movies you have seen : http://watchth.is/my-movies/seen)

Re: Rate my startup: http://WatchTh.is is a site for movie lovers

#9
If I sign in with my Twitter/Facebook account, what do you do with it? Will things I say on WatchThis site show up on Twitter/Facebook? (I say this as someone looking to sign in and even clicking the Sign In button -- there's no indication of what will happen if I do it).

Right now it doesn't look possible to sign up without a Twitter/Facebook account.

Re: Rate my startup: http://WatchTh.is is a site for movie lovers

#10

If I sign in with my Twitter/Facebook account, what do you do with it? Will things I say on WatchThis site show up on Twitter/Facebook? (I say this as someone looking to sign in and even clicking the Sign In button -- there's no indication of what will happen if I do it). Right now it doesn't look possible to sign up without a Twitter/Facebook account.

We're working on the possibility to allow the users to publish on Facebook/Twitter their comments and favorites if they want to. But we currently don't publish anything on Facebook/Twitter.

You're right, we should make it more clear.

We disabled the login/password login option because it's easier for our users (automatic nickname suggestion, no password to remember, future Facebook/Twitter publishing) and more interesting for us (user photo for instance).

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