It’s a quiet Saturday night, you are tired of choosing the right television show, and you want to know what your friends are watching. Or, say, you feel like watching a heartfelt movie on a rainy evening, and you are unable to reach the right person to ask for a recommendation. And perhaps you remember someone suggesting Glengarry Glen Ross but you can’t recollect who it was. Also, how does one know what their friends think of Lokesh-Kanagaraj-Vijay’s Leowithout tirelessly scrolling through the clutter that is social media? Shifting through chatboxes and multiple apps can be tiring. Now, imagine a platform that curates all those personal recommendations and reviews for you.
This is what Coimbatore-based Rohan Jacob dreamed of during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 when content boomed and homebound consumers were busy suggesting content to each other. “When we recommend movies to someone, we have to be conscious of their taste and their mood as well. This activity of recommending movies became so overwhelming that I started a Google Sheet and shared it with my friends.” That’s when Rohan thought of making Nokio (Malayalam for ‘Have you seen?’), to bring it all under one roof.
Nokio is a social platform that primarily helps you send movie recommendations and reviews to your friends and family. “Because today, if you look up a movie, you will mostly get articles from other influencers or people you don’t know personally. A personal recommendation is powerful,” says Rohan, Founder and CEO of this home-grown application.
Rohan Jacob, Founder and CEO, Nokio | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
How is it different from Letterboxd?
A sceptical cinephile who is aware of Letterboxd — the New Zealand-based social cataloguing platform for movies — might suspect Nokio as a Letterboxd 2.0. But Rohan clarifies that Nokio isn’t a platform meant just for cinephiles but one that even a casual moviegoer can use to curate recommendations.
“The bigger differentiating factor is that Letterboxd is a ‘social review’ platform — you drop your reviews and people who like your taste follow you — but Nokio is a more personal ‘recommendation application’. You can’t send recommendations on Letterboxd, and you have to go through someone’s profile to see what they are watching.” One can see this difference even in the user interface and experience of the two platforms — like how the reviews appear under a title or the ‘Circles’ section in Nokio that makes it a social platform.
Unique features and why you will find filmmaker Gautham Menon on Nokio:
A unique feature that should excite a user is how Nokio lets every user create two profiles — a private one just for their inner circle and a public one. “We relate to a friend’s recommendation differently than an influencer’s, and a platform that understands this is necessary for this social media age. To not overwhelm the user is also why we, as a platform, will not tell you what to watch. You will not find a ‘More Like This’ section anywhere,” adds Rohan.
Nokio, interestingly, has no global rating system for the movies, like in Rotten Tomatoes, IMDb, or Letterboxd. “A rating that a user sees is the average rating from their network of friends, so the rating will be different for each of the users. This lets users understand the preferences of their friends.”
Such a platform that helps in deciding what to watch and in discussing movies with friends has attracted the attention of influencers as well. “We have introduced a new feature for influencers through which they can send recommendations to all of their followers at once. For instance, a film critic can select one movie, from all the new releases they catch up, to recommend to their followers, or they can recommend those movies that they don’t watch as a part of their work.”
It’s for the same reason that Rohan has onboarded filmmakers like Gautham Vasudev Menon, Anurag Kashyap, Rojin Thomas (Home), Srinath Rajendran (Kurup), and so on, to the platform. “Because apart from the films they make, we need to know what they are watching. A Gautham Menon fan like myself is curious and excited to see him recommend the latest Spanish Netflix film, Nowhere.”
Main features of Nokio | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
Nokio at Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival:
Nokio has partnered with the ongoing Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival as one of the sponsors. Rohan says that the app’s dedicated section to curate awards and festivals will be showcased at the festival. “Tens of thousands of people attend a festival, including critics and influencers. So a film viewer on Nokio can step out of the film and see the reactions of those people and also know who they watched it with.” Teaming up with Chalchitra Talks, Nokio is also creating a group on the platform for festival participants, a move that Rohan says will showcase the coming together of a community.
Nokio is currently available on Android and iOS. “We should have a browser version and a TV OS in the next 3-6 months. At the end of the day, it’s all for the love of movies,” signs off Rohan.
Published - October 27, 2023 02:37 pm IST
