• Jinni to Power Xbox Video Discovery

    In a big win for the company, Jinni has been selected by Microsoft to help power video content discovery solutions on Xbox. Jinni categorizes TV shows and movies using its "Entertainment Genome" project which assigns metadata such as mood, style and plot to each title. In the Xbox implementation, these will be combined with Xbox signals such as viewing history, to build and present content recommendations to users. The deal is for a multi-year period, suggesting Jinni will be a part of Xbox One, launching in November. Microsoft is positioning Xbox One equally as an entertainment device and gaming console.

    Video recommendations continue to be a huge source of opportunity and challenge for connected TV devices such as Xbox and other video content service providers. Because on-demand catalogs of TV shows and movies differ (depending on rights, business models, etc.), it's often unclear to users what content is actually available to watch and under what terms (e.g. free, subscription, pay-per-use, etc.). As a result, being able to clearly recommend desirable and available content is critical to the user experience and building the perception of value.