Last week Yandex, the NASDAQ-listed Russian search giant, launched an online video streaming offer on KinoPoisk (in Russian: “Cinema Search”), the movie and TV recommendation service it acquired two years ago.
Inspired by US platform IMDb, KinoPoisk was initially an online database containing 100 million movie descriptions and ratings with associated trailers and user commentaries.
The new version displays movies and TV shows from several video streaming providers. Using Yandex’s recommendation technology, the site also suggests movies that will most likely suit the tastes of each individual user. Users may create their own playlists of movies and TV shows, and share their playlists with their friends.
Following the trend toward legalization of online content in Russia, Yandex aims to “drive its audience to consume licensed content.” “This will help our partners increase their monetization and in turn license more content. As a result, our users will have access to more high-quality films and TV shows to watch at their leisure,” stated KinoPoisk head Olga Mansurova.
New version or “piece of shit”?
Yesterday, however, following a flurry of criticism from users, Yandex reverted to the previous version of KinoPoisk.
Users’ negative comments had spread massively across social networks in the days following the release of the new version. Demonstrating their strong emotional attachment to the 12-year-old movie database, many were repelled by a series of changes in the site’s new functionalities and design.
These negative emotions were fuelled by KinoPoisk co-founder Vitaly Tatsii, who went as far as calling Yandex’s new platform “a useless, raw piece of shit.”
Meanwhile, more than 40,000 users signed an online petition on Change.org to demand that the old version be brought back.
Launched in 2003, KinoPoisk quickly asserted itself as the most popular resource on movies in the Russian language Internet. In 2007, already attracting one million users per month, the site received a capital injection of $1.2 million from DST/Mail.ru, a leading Russian tech fund and Internet group. Two years later, DST yielded its 40% stake to France’s AlloCiné, a portfolio company of Tiger Global Management. The site was finally acquired by Yandex in 2013, with the founders selling their stake to the search company. The details of the transaction were not disclosed, but industry insiders believe that the site’s valuation may have been in the range of $50 million.
TNS estimated KinoPoisk’s monthly traffic at 11.09 million users from Russia between 12 and 64 years of age in July 2015.
