Netflix Contest closed today after three long years... What a rush at the end
The Contest which was launched by Netflix three years ago (Grand Prize: $1,000,000 (USD) Cash) for substantially improving the accuracy of predictions about how much someone is going to love a movie based on their movie preferences; has finally closed today at 2009-07-26 18:42:37 UTC.
Netflix guessed it right that it is not going be an easy task when they launched the contest with a time frame of 5 years. (Contest started on October 2, 2006 and was planned to continue through at least October 2, 2011). It took three long years for a team to provide the improvement of more than 10%. As team 'BelKor's Pragmaic Chaos' became the first team to cross the 10% mark last month, the contest closure started as per the rules with the final 30 day window. For the past 3 years, many teams worked very hard to be the lucky winner of the Netflix contest. We will know the final winner of the contest in few weeks time from now once Netflix evaluates the entries above 10%.
Last 24 hours were definitely nerve-breaking for the final two teams as Leaderboard changed twice in the last hour and the top two teams ('The Ensemble' and 'BelKor's Pragmatic Chaos') fought hard for the first spot in the table. In the final Leaderboard tally on Netflix’s site ‘The Ensemble’ regained the first spot just 4 minutes before the contest closure time.
Last 24 hours were definitely nerve-breaking for the final two teams as Leaderboard changed twice in the last hour and the top two teams ('The Ensemble' and 'BelKor's Pragmatic Chaos') fought hard for the first spot in the table. In the final Leaderboard tally on Netflix’s site ‘The Ensemble’ regained the first spot just 4 minutes before the contest closure time.
May the best team win and I wish best of luck to both the teams!!!
