Netflix Prize Challenge

Netflix is an American company dedicated to entertainment available in more than 190 countries. It is a service that provides a monthly fee, associated with a user account, content from award-winning, Netflix original productions, feature films, documentaries, series and many others.

Netflix on october, 2006, offered a prize to the first development of a recommender system model  that could beat its existing algorithm Cinematch. 

51,051 people participated in this challenge spread over 41,305 different teams from 186 countries (Pita, 2016). 

Participants in this event could compete either individually or collectively, in the latter case, by forming teams and registering on the official Netflix Prize website. The teams had the mission to provide the name of the team, full name of each member, email address, affiliation of each member, email, affiliation, country and also choose a leader, who would be in charge of representing the team in those instances when necessary e (The Netflix Prize Rules, 1997-2009).  

All information entered and submitted had to be collected and evaluated in the United States, and be in English. All information regarding the teams was confidential until a winner was determined. Netflix would not use participant registration information for commercial purposes. Each participant had to give their approval regarding compliance with these rules (The Netflix Prize Rules, 1997-2009).