CineMatch: The Netflix Algorithm

This is the era of artificial intelligence and this science is getting scarily advanced. Most of the times, when we enter a search query in Google, Facebook or YouTube, the required results show up even before we are finished writing the question. There is nothing behind the screens reading our minds in some mysterious pattern. This is pure science and all these things work on algorithms specially designed for the purpose.

While using Netflix, the recommendations for movies are generally the ones we enjoy watching. This is accomplished by an algorithm that instructs the servers to recommend a movie the viewer is most expected to like. This algorithm works by taking into account a number of factors which include, but are not limited to:

• The movies themselves. They are arranged into groups of closely related movies
• The ratings of the movies. If a movie is rated high by a customer who also watched the movie you are watching now, it is likely to show up in the recommendations.
• The combined ratings of a movie by all users. The movies with highest overall ratings are likely to be enjoyed by almost everyone.

The algorithm which does all these functions is called CineMatch algorithm. It has proved to be a very successful algorithm over time. The users watching CineMatch recommended movies have given them 5 stars 75 out of 100 times. Half of the users have rated the movies the same as the previous viewers had rated them. The CineMatch algorithm doesn’t only work by the data already on the servers. For individual users, it also learns from the behavior of the user to better predict a movie the user is expected to be interested in. Recently, Netflix had a makeover of the algorithm to improve its performance. It cost the company around a million Dollars.