We use technical and analytics cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. You can learn more about it in the Privacy Policy page.
Accept & close
Looking for outstanding web development talents to get the job done?
Let's talk!
im_vuniverse_2880x1276-1

VUniverse: body leasing for an innovative streaming service

How our talent helped create an efficient recommendation system using graph data science.

Summary:

  • Client

    VUniverse

    Country

    NYC, United States

  • Project scope and technology

    Ruby on Rails development

    Industry

    Media & Entertainment, SaaS

  • Team Composition

    1 Ruby on Rails developer

    Work duration

    10 months

VUniverse it’s an online platform and mobile app that aggregates content across all the streaming services, providing spot-on movie and TV show recommendations using proprietary algorithms, AI, and human curation. The company was named one of five finalists in the AI & Machine Learning category for the 23rd annual SXSW Innovation Awards.

Challenge:

The Client came to us when most of the product was already developed. 

Our task was to write part of the code for the back-end, which was responsible for the key functionality of the service - a system of recommendations for similar titles. 

We used the Neo4j Graph Platform for this purpose, which allows creating queries in natural language and is much faster than SQL.

VUniverse aggregates content from available streaming services (e.g. Netflix or HBO) so the main challenge was humongous amounts of data to be processed.

Each of the services contains thousands of titles, and each of them contains dozens of parameters: from the genre, through the cast, to the cover page, or user rating. How to create a recommendation system when there is so much data? This is where Neo4j came in handy.

Process:

A dedicated team was assigned to the project, which first of all took care of finding the right technology for the task - easy creation of " connections" between films and efficient search. 

The Neo4j Graph Platform, which, unlike SQL, doesn't arrange data in rows, but has a flexible structure defined by stored relationships between data records, was ideal for this.

With Neo4j, each data record, or node, stores direct pointers to all the nodes it's connected to. This allows for deeper and faster queries.

To better visualize how much data the graphics had to handle: there are 500,000 films in the service database. Each of them is a title, genre, casting, user rating... Efficient technology was crucial here.

The system itself uses AWS because it easily scales resource consumption.

The state-of-the-art graph database Neo4j made the competitive advantage of VUniverse - striking movie recommendations - come to life and work for the users. We embraced the technology from day one and continue to master it to provide better and better service for the Client.

default_128x128

Marek Zieliński

Full-stack Developer at Ideamotive

Outcome:

Thanks to the talent of our team it was possible to complete the product and get a nomination in SXSW Innovation Awards.

With the right technology we have achieved significant customer benefits: better responsiveness thanks to data imports reduced by half.

We have corrected countless bugs. Customer experience has increased significantly (thanks to our recommendation system). We have also developed a test architecture to make it easier to maintain the project.

Thanks to our work the client has reached MVP very quickly and can look for investors. 

The service and application are available for users in the beta phase.

The attitude that they brought everyday made the project incredibly enjoyable to work on and manage.

Monica Brandy

COO, VUniverse

Looking for Ruby on Rails developers?

Get in touch with us and we'll provide you with right set of talent perfectly matching your industry, technology and company culture.

Hire Ruby on Rails Developers

We helped VUniverse and dozens of other companies. Reach out to us and learn, what our tech talent network can do for your business.

Ruby on Rails Developers
Web Developers
Web Designers