The key for social TV guides to offer smart, relevant recommendations is user data — and enough of it. The more you know about a user’s favorites and viewing habits — and those of his/her friends — the more relevant TV shows you can recommend. The problem is, not everyone “likes” their favorite shows on Facebook or talks about them on Twitter, leaving some social TV guides with a one-dimensional view.
Enter Matcha.tv, now in private beta, which connects your account not only to Facebook, but with Netflix, Hulu and YouTube as well. So Matcha knows, for example, that I watched the movie “Salt” on Netflix a couple weeks ago (I don’t recommend it), and my 2-year-old has rated several of his favorite cartoons. And it knows I’ve watched recent episodes of SNL and 30 Rock on Hulu. All this data adds up to smarter recommendations, and it shows.
Matcha doesn’t stop there. “Matcha.tv not only factors in what you watch, and what your friends are watching, but a *ton* of metadata from Facebook, Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB, and Twitter,” explains a blog post on the site — so the recommendation engine can suggest what shows are trending in popularity. It also has its own like, dislike and recommend buttons, so it has even more data to work with. And as you might expect, you can friend other people and see what they’re watching, too.
If you see something on Matcha you want to watch, it links you straight over to the clip — no need to re-authenticate on Netflix, since you’ve already connected your account. For Hulu and YouTube clips, you can play them in an embedded layer right on Matcha. Pretty nifty.
Matcha is definitely on the right track, reducing the effort it takes to “train” a social TV guide before it offers valuable recommendations. It’s still hasn’t cracked the recommendation code — I need to make a few more friends on the service, perhaps — but it’s getting close. And, of course, an iPad app version would be great. With over a dozen competitors, this will be a thrilling race to watch over the next year.
