$50,000 Progress Prize is Awarded on First Anniversary of $1 Million Netflix Prize

$50,000 Progress Prize is Awarded on First Anniversary of $1 Million Netflix Prize

Team from AT&T Labs Wins at the Wire

LOS GATOS, Calif., Nov. 13 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Computer scientists worldwide take note: $1 million is still in play as the Netflix Prize enters its second year of competition.

Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX) , the world's largest online movie rental service, today announced it is awarding the first Progress Prize of $50,000 to "KorBell," a group of researchers at AT&T Labs, but the Grand Prize of $1 million is still up for grabs in the multi-year contest to improve upon the Netflix recommendations system by 10 percent.

"It was a closely fought race for the Progress Prize right to the wire," said Netflix Vice President of Recommendations Systems Jim Bennett. "KorBell's leading submission was posted to the Netflix Prize Web site just 30 minutes before the deadline."

The KorBell team of Yehuda Koren, Robert Bell, and Chris Volinsky, who work on visualizing and analyzing large networks for AT&T in Florham Park, N.J., improved upon the Netflix recommendation system by 8.43 percent. They led a crowded field of more than 27,000 contestants on more than 2,550 teams from 161 countries.

Koren, KorBell's captain, said he is an enthusiastic Netflix member who was drawn to compete for the Netflix Prize after the Netflix Prize dataset gave him an "opportunity to study a fascinating network." Koren said he and his team spent 2,000 hours in data analysis and computation to come up with the highest improvement to date over the Netflix recommendation system. Results of the team's work will also apply to AT&T Labs' ongoing research and development efforts to enhance the company's network and communications and entertainment service portfolio.

A board of judges, including senior engineers at Netflix and well-known members of the machine learning community, validated KorBell's entry as the winner of the first progress prize.

Koren will travel to Netflix headquarters on November 19 to receive the $50,000 at a ceremony at which he will publicly present the team's results to an audience of Netflix executives, academicians, computer scientists and others. Netflix will publish a detailed description of KorBell's submission for the benefit of companies, entrepreneurs and academicians.

In the meantime, the competition for the grand prize continues. Netflix will continue to award an annual $50,000 Progress Prize until someone hits the 10 percent milestone and captures the $1 million purse.

When Netflix launched the Netflix Prize last year, it made available to contestants 100 million anonymous movie ratings ranging from one to five stars, the largest such data set ever released. All personal information identifying individual Netflix customers was removed from the prize data, which contains only movie titles, star ratings and dates but no text reviews.

The Netflix recommendation engine spans the 90,000 titles in the Netflix catalog and is an essential element of the company's movie subscription service. Each of Netflix's more than seven million members enjoys a personalized member Web site that enables them to rate movies on a one to five star scale. Netflix combines those individual ratings into a database of more than two billion movie ratings and employs proprietary algorithms and software to identify movies that tend to be rated highly (or lowly) by people with similar tastes. The accuracy of this software has been praised by movie critics and members alike and enables Netflix to fulfill its goal of connecting people with movies they'll love.

Complete details for registering and competing for the Netflix Prize are available at http://www.netflixprize.com/.

About Netflix

Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX) is the world's largest online movie rental service, providing more than seven million subscribers access to more than 90,000 DVD titles plus a growing library of more than 5,000 choices that can be watched instantly on their PCs. The company offers nine subscription plans, starting at only $4.99 per month. There are no due dates and no late fees -- ever. All Netflix plans include both DVDs delivered to subscribers' homes and, for no additional fee, movies and TV series that can be started in as little as 30 seconds on subscribers' PCs. DVDs are delivered free to members by first class mail, with a postage-paid return envelope, from over 100 U.S. shipping points. Nearly 95 percent of Netflix subscribers live in areas that can be reached with generally one business day delivery. Netflix offers personalized movie recommendations and has two billion movie ratings. For more information, visit http://www.netflix.com/.

First Call Analyst:
FCMN Contact: ltran@netflix.com

Source: Netflix, Inc.

CONTACT: Steve Swasey, Vice President, Corporate Communications of
Netflix, Inc., +1-408-540-3947, sswasey@netflix.com

Web site: http://www.netflix.com/
http://www.netflixprize.com/

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Profile: International Entertainment