IDEA #36 - Social Audio / Video Recommendations

By Steve Poland   •   March 4, 2007

Problem: I’m out and want to rent a movie, or buy a movie / CD / book — I’d like recommendations from friends or people with similar tastes as mine.

Solution: Dial a phone number (VXML) or send a text message (SMS) and receive recommendations (or selections from your own wishlist) for books, movies, or music — whatever you’re looking to purchase / rent. If calling, you’ll hear audio recommendations by your friends / network, or others that have similar tastes to you.

Essentially you could create a business that starts compiling an archive of audio reviews — a user could somehow import their Netflix account info, and/or Amazon.com account info, and/or Last.fm account info … and then start creating (short - 30 secs?) audio reviews/recommendations of their favorites (or least favorites).

This could come in handy when:

  • You’re at Blockbuster and want to rent a movie. You want a comedy — based on your profile you filled-out online, we’ll recommend some great comedies that are out. Or we’ll tell you comedies on your wishlist. Or we’ll tell you comedies that your friends / network have recommended — and we might even play an audio message by the person, so you can hear what they have to say about the movie.
  • You’re at the airport and need a book. Ditto as above.
  • You’re at the mall and want to buy a new CD. Ditto as above.

Video Reviews: This could also morph into video reviews — same concept, except users would primarily use this on the web (since it’s all video).

Get Users Reviewing Instantly: We could make either of these concepts very simple — a quick / easy interface that gets them recording reviews immediately. Similar to a HotOrNot interface, the user is presented with a movie or CD or book, rates it and gives a quick audio or video review of it. If the user imports their account info from Netflix / Amazon / Last.fm — then we can immediately provide the user with movies/music/books that they have seen/heard/read.

Social Networking: Then we start tying users together and provide recommendations to them — showing them recommendations by friends / family / those they admire, but also neighbors (people that they don’t know, but whom have similar tastes; Last.fm does this).




Related posts:

  1. IDEA #22 - Amazon.com Social Networking There must be a way to turn Amazon.com’s userbase into a huge social network. Amazon offers an API that gives access to their user reviews (although it may just be per product — so you...
  2. IDEA #60 - Video Search from the Audio I’m assuming this has to be happening somewhere. Basically, there should be a video search engine that uses speech-to-text technology (which isn’t perfect, but even if it’s 90% right, that’s better than nothing) and starts...
  3. IDEA #5 - Video & Audio Ratings of Transactions (Businesses/Products/People) How many millions of transactions are happening each day? Whether I’m looking to buy something from a local retailer, or an online retailer, or an individual on Craig’s List — I’d like to know the...
  4. IDEA #42 - Audio Ads Network Provider As many of you are aware, I have posted several ideas that utilize VXML technology. I write ideas that incorporate this technology, because I feel it’s under-utilized, has great utility (the phone is something everyone...
  5. IDEA #7 - Video Comments Plugin for Blogs Michael Arrington, TechCrunch 1/14/07: “For the blogger crowd, it would be very useful to have a plugin that works directly with the standard comments feature that allows users to leave text, audio, or audio/video comments...

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