What do you like?
New recommendation app from Edinburgh International Festival
A screengrab of the Suggest My Fest app
By Thom Dibdin
The Edinburgh International Festival has created a facebook app to help potential audiences find shows they might like.
The Suggest My Fest app uses a series of sliding scales and the user’s own facebook likes – and what their facebook friends have booked in to attend – to find four productions suitable to the user.
The app – embedded here on All Edinburgh Theatre after the jump) – also suggests what it calls a “wildcard” event – designed to be “a little different from what you usually like.”
Jackie Westbrook, EIF marketing and communications director, said: “The Festival is constantly looking to add extra value around the audience experience. With Suggest My Fest we hope to engage with our existing audience and bring new audiences to our rich and varied programme. By embedding it on third party websites we also hope to extend the Festival’s reach and actively encourage more tourists and visitors to enjoy the world’s Festival city.”
The Edinburgh International Festival commissioned and creatively developed the app with Storm Ideas, Suggest My Fest was also developed in collaboration with Festivals Edinburgh Innovation Lab, with support from Scottish Enterprise, allowing other festivals in the city to use it following its creation for the Edinburgh International Festival.
Yaniv Mazor, the EIF’s head of digital admitted that there is still untapped potential in bringing together social and open graph information with the Festival’s open data source (API). He said “We are excited to use online technologies to contribute to the Festival experience. With a fantastic choice of over 230 events in our programme, Suggest My Fest is a helpful and entertaining tool to find the perfect events for each user.”
The Suggest The Fest app is embedded below. You need to be a facebook user to see whether it works or not…
ENDS
