VUniverse is a new personalized movie and TV show recommendation platform that allows users to browse multiple streaming services within a single app.
Ryan McManus, chief product officer and co-founder at VUniverse, said the app uses artificial intelligence and proprietary algorithms. It takes in a variety of factors and characteristics from movies and shows, as well as human curation and community to build recommendations tailored to the users’ tastes.
In addition to movie and show discovery, VUniverse includes features like watchlist creation, personal watch history and more. The company said additional discovery tools and social features will be available later this year, which will allow users to create their own movie and show categories to share within the community, as well as with friends and family.
VUniverse is not the first app that’s taken on unified search, discovery and recommendations for the ocean of streaming apps out there. But McManus said his company’s team will give it an edge.
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“VUniverse has assembled a team of industry veterans that have been working on surfacing great content for decades. We've laid the groundwork to provide personalized recommendations for the most unique viewers right now and continue to improve those recommendations over time,” he said in an email.
CEO Evelyn Watters and COO Monica Brady, who together founded the Golden Trailer Awards, have both had long careers in advertising production. McManus previously served as vice president of product at the now-defunct MoviePass and Julie Reiger, chief data strategist, previously worked at 20th Century Fox.
The beta version of VUniverse – which works with streaming services including Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+ and HBO – is now available as a desktop and mobile web app as well on iOS and Android devices and Android TV. The platform plans to launch on Roku, Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV devices.
“We created VUniverse because we were tired of hunting through endless titles of movie suggestions and toggling between services,” said Monica Brady, chief operating officer and co-founder at VUniverse, in a statement. “There is so much amazing content out there that finding what to watch shouldn’t be a chore.”