SnagFilms Will Add Social Network Features to Let Users Share Info on Favorite Flicks

 

SnagFilms, the five year old specialty/art/indie film free movie service today will announce the beta launch of  a new Website,  a little bit of a mash-up of movie service and social Website that will encourage viewers to sign up to share movie recommendations to friends and others, or pick from recommendations by Snag’s panel of film experts.

The beta test will involve only 1,000 participants so ad-supported Snag can determine any necessary tweaks, but it appears a broader launch will be happening by the beginning of next week. 

Snag already has four million users and is a pretty well known commodity among film fans who are more inclined to gravitate toward the kind of movies that populate the schedules at film festivals and art houses.  Movies are typically interrupted four to six times per title for advertising messages beyond the typical pre-roll messages.

Recognizing that a large percentage of the success behind a movie release relies on word-of-mouth, and that conversely, movie-goers are often looking for guidance, the new SnagFilms’ most noteworthy new wrinkle is the ability for users to list favorite films that can be accessed by their friends and associates, and an algorithm that recommends films for you based on preferences you’ve listed, or that Snag deduces from other data, but not, the beta site notes, “in a creepy way.”

 The feature also plays into the trend toward social media interactions like Twitter and Facebook.  

The feature, founding CEO Rick Allen hopes, will create a kind of self-curation to create buzz for some features that may not have received loads of promotional support when new.

An extended profile of Snag and Allen will appear on MediaPost’s OnlineVideo Daily site later.   

But Allen says SnagFilms, unlike Netflix, has no intentions right now to gravitate toward new productions.

Snag has solid financial backing which includes founder and sports entrepreneur  Ted Leonsis, formerly a top AOL executive along with Steve Case, who is involved with Snag through Revolution Ventures, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Comcast Interactive Capital (CIC), Terry Semel’s Windsor Media and others.  It’s available on iOs and Android devices, through Windows Xbox  LIVE, Roku, Sony, Kindle, Blackberry RIM and Boxee.

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