Most of the major streaming services have some version of a content recommendation widget. They’re all allegedly personalized and based on your particular viewing habits, but at least in my experience, they often leave me more confused than satisfied. Occasionally, I even feel a little insulted and left wondering how the algorithm could possibly think I’d watch one of its choices. Well, thankfully, one company has stepped forward with a solution.
Free streaming service Plex announced today that it’s rolling out a new feature called Discover Together. It allows users to not only see what their friends and family are watching across the entire streaming universe, it also allows them to see what other people have rated and interacted with. So, instead of getting advice from an algorithm, everyone involved can now get recommendations and ideas from specific people.
Discover Together rolled out in beta form last year and already has more than 150,000 early participants. Starting today, the feature will go live to everyone with a Plex account, which has more than 20,000,000 active monthly users. A higher volume of participants will only increase the number of suggestions and allow people to start vibing with more friend of friend type suggestions. Your streaming taste soulmate is out there somewhere. This could be the first step toward finding them.
Of course I wouldn’t recommend taking every recommendation from everyone. That’s where the personal experience element of this comes in. You might have one friend that’s got super good taste in documentaries but watches absolute trash movies. You can creep on all the stuff they’re watching, which allows you to ignore all the movie suggestions and only pay attention when they’re watching a documentary. Just think about your friends and family. Deep down, you know who you can trust and who you can’t, which subjects they get and which subjects they don’t.
I would imagine there will be some people out there who are less excited than me about this new feature. Fortunately, Plex has given users the power to control their personal privacy settings. You can toggle it all the way up so your entire streaming life is an open book, or you can toggle it all the way down so your business is your business and no one ever finds out you’ve been binge-watching dating shows or really graphic true crime documentaries or in my case, every episode of MasterChef ever produced.
To sign up for Discover Together, you’ll need a Plex account. Just log in, head over to the Discover section and start browsing. The whole thing is free; so, if you’re unhappy with all the streaming recommendations you’ve been getting, there’s no reason not to try it out.
