itcher, a London based entertainment recommendations app, could change the way the world discovers movies, TV shows, books and games with their community-powered recommendations.
Too Much Entertainment, Too Little Time
The number of titles available to us is ever increasing and with it, the overwhelming problem of which title to pick next. With over 130k movies, 475k albums, 2m books and 24k games available to us, itcher knew it was time to reinvent the discovery process.
Meet Your New Assistant
How have they fixed the problem of discovery? itcher describes itself as an entertainment assistant. It’s powered by artificial intelligence that aims to find recommendations you’ll love, meaning you can carry personalised recommendations in your pocket.
For the user, this means a much less stressful approach to discovering new titles. According to itcher, movie lovers, TV show addicts, bookworms, music fanatics and gamers no longer have to spend hours looking for a title, only to realise they don’t like it. By personalising recommendations to each user, itcher eliminates wasted hours, leaving users with more time to enjoy the things they love.
Going Back to itcher’s Roots
It all began a few years ago, when Co-founder and CEO, Daniel Rovira, realised there wasn’t a mainstream platform for all the movies that aren’t blockbusters. It meant that if you were a bigger fan of the indie and lesser known movies - or you’d seen almost every blockbuster you could think of - there wasn’t really much left to help you. That’s why he, along with Co-founders William Cooper and Richard Brindley, created itcher. It would be the place to find recommendations for entertainment based on taste, and not how much a title had been marketed.
After working hard to improve the original version, itcher released V.2 in 2016 and received 140k sign ups in the first 6 months - all with a limited marketing budget. Those users have rated over 4.9 million titles in total and have received 31.2 million personalised recommendations from itcher.
It’s Getting Personal
You might be wondering how itcher can personalise recommendations, since our taste is a very personal thing. When you download itcher, you’ll be asked to rate 5 titles from each category (movies, books, music and games) although you can skip or leave out categories if you’re not interested. From there, you’ll browse a few titles, rate ones you’re familiar with and itcher will get to work analysing your taste. This is where the community-powered part comes in. what itcher does is match you with people across the world with similar taste. It cross references your interests with all of theirs, analyses all the data from the ratings and recommends titles you’re likely to enjoy. For example if there are 5 other people in the world who have near identical opinions to you, and they also all watched or listened to another title they rated highly, you’ll be rated that title. It’s the technology equivalent of all of your friends loving a movie that you haven’t seen yet and recommending it to you.
What’s in it For You?
If you’re an entertainment buff, it’s worth downloading itcher to see what it can do for you. Our guess is that is saves you a fair amount of time, particularly with movies now there are so many streaming services.
It’s available to download on Android and iOS, or you can check out the Desktop version.
