Alan's dashboard

Nick,

We have implemented a system to do just what you have suggested. We allow users to copy (“export”) their rating from a client site like Netflix to SaveMyRatings.com, and then copy (“import”) their ratings into other sites like Amazon.

I would strongly agree with the reasons stated for data portability. It ultimately boils down to consumer choice, personalization and efficiency. These are the same reasons people want to export their contact lists from webmail services like Hotmail. On our main site, we laid out the reasons we support data portability and I’d be glad to elaborate.

You raise some very real difficulties associated with data portability, especially where a universal identifier is no present. We developed a solution to map titles from one site to another; thereby trying to automate as much of that transfer as possible. If the user feels we got the mapping wrong, we give them the option to select a different mapping.

We offer the option to download your ratings in CSV, but our most popular feature is copying your ratings into other sites. For example, a lot of our users have copied their Netflix ratings into Amazon; which will greatly improve the Amazon recommendations.

Clearly, if you only have a couple ratings it’s not worth the time. But a lot of our users have invested significant time and energy into creating their ratings with the hope that it will personalize and improve these web services. We’re trying to help them get the most out of their work.

I’d be interested to hear your feedback on our implementation. We currently support eight different movie websites (see our “Support Sites” link). Feel free to email me $MyName@SaveMyRatings.com

Regards,

Alan

Snowflake,
We created a site to address those three items you've mentioned. It's called http://SaveMyRatings.com and it allows you to export and import your movie (and book) ratings from multiple sites (Netflix, IMDB, Amazon...etc.) You can also download a CSV of your ratings. We're working on other formats.

You can also merge ratings from multiple sites by exporting them all into SaveMyRatings.com and the result should be only the unique ratings.

Seeing as you're clearly someone who's thought about this a lot, I'd appreciate your feedback.

Contact info on the site.

Thanks.

Alan