Budgeting, Planning & Forecasting

Budgeting, Planning & Forecasting

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January 06, 2011

Movie Recommendation Engine Jinni Closes Series B Funding



What's almost as good as having your own personal in-house movie critic who knows your tastes and preferences and can recommend films and television shows that will appeal to you? A website that does the same. Jinni, a movie and television show semantic search and recommendation engine, has reportedly closed a $5 million Series B led by Belgium telecommunications operator, Belgacom (News - Alert), and an unnamed connected-TV manufacturer, according to Mashable.

A previous investor in the company, DFJ Tamir Fishman Ventures, also participated in the round.

Jinni (a variant on the word “genie”), allows users to input the type of full-length film, short film or television they'd like to see by concept, rather than by keyword. (You can input something like, “heroism in the face of disaster” or “high school, funny” or “race against time” to find content that will suit your mood.)

The service is powered by the Movie Genome, an approach to indexing titles based on attributes like mood, tone, plot and structure. To help you locate what you're interested in after identifying it, Jinni integrates with Netflix, iTunes, Amazon and Hulu (News - Alert) catalogs, as well as electronic TV guides.

“Completing the Series B funding round allows us to focus on what we do best: Developing an innovative product that is designed to fundamentally improve the entertainment experience," said Jinni CEO and co-founder, Yosi Glick.

The cash infusion is also expected to help Jinni become multilingual. Given the nature of the investors, said Mashable, it's safe to assume that Jinni will become integrated into the television-watching experience on even more Internet-connected TVs and set top boxes.

Startups aiming to build spot-on semantic entertainment recommendation engines will be a trend for 2011, predicts Mashable. Jinni's Series B round should help the startup become a strong player within the niche market.


Tracey Schelmetic is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Tracey's articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Jaclyn Allard
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