FilmAffinity.com (AKA MovieAffinity) was created in 2002 by Pablo Kurt Verdu Schumann, Daniel Nicolas Aldea and a team of programmers, web designers and movie goers.
The team was lead by Pablo Kurt (creator) and Daniel Nicolas (the programmer and main partner). We are both the owners of the FILMAFFINITY copyright & Movie Soulmates® Trademark. Let me introduce myself: My name is Pablo
Kurt: half Spanish, half German, and also a little bit Canadian (I like to think because I studied e-business in Canada for 1
year). I´m an e-marketing teacher and in my spare time I am also a pretty tough movie critic.
Seeing as the entire filmaffinity team was interested in New Technologies and the Internet, it should come as no surprise that we
all met through the www -actually a newsgroup- when I was looking for programmers to develop my latest brilliant idea :) The idea was
to make: the-most-accurate-personal-affinitybased-movies-recommendation-system-ever-created" (too long for a domain though).
My idea was pretty simple: Among the millions of people in the world, there must be quite a few that have the EXACT same taste in movies
as I do, so being able to follow their recommendations would be great! But how could I find these like-movie-minded people, my Movie
Soulmates? The Internet was the answer. And the degree of affinity could be figured out using math.
After establishing the idea I started looking for good programmers -actually not just good programmers but the best. Then I
found Nico and the other programmers (Their resumés were perfect: they all loved The Matrix, and Nico had made one of
the best FTP programs in the world).
I thought to myself: “this FTP program is damn good!.. and The Matrix is not a bad
movie after all" :)
Two days later we started up. We worked very hard for almost 10 months to get the web site I had in mind.
Programming, designing, working on the contents, algorythms, translating… There
was much more work to do than we had expected.
We worked 23.5 hours a day (yeah, we stopped but only to watch The Simpsons), 7
days a week.
Finally, in May 2002, we launched www.filmaffinity.com
Today, 4 years later, thousands of registered people agree: the system works!
I mean: if you rate 100 movies and a guy from London rates the same 100
movies and you both agree on 99 out of 100...you are Movie Soulmates®,
and filmaffinity will show you both of your respective recommendations.
- Is this a web site for movie goers? Of course.
- Is this a web site for intellectual Ingmar Bergman-fans? Sure.
They'll definitely find their weirdos Movie Soulmates® (just kidding :)
- Is this a web site for my kids? Absolutely: This web site is rated G.
- Is this a web site for my DVD addict roommate? You betcha.
In short:
the best thing about filmaffinity is that it is an INDEPENDENT WEBSITE
where everyone can follow his/her movie soulmates' recommendations.
