Netflix profiles improve movie recommendations

Netflix as at long last started rolling out individualized user profiles which let people get better personalized recommendations.

The free feature, which became available on certain accounts and will launch this month, will allow subscribers to delineate up to five different profiles.

"The truth of it is that over the years we've really personalized for households rather than individuals within those households," said Todd Yellin, Netflix's vice president of product innovation. "Profiles is the next logical step in making personalization even better."

Profiles can be created on the Netflix website or Playstation 3, but for now, not on any of the other devices capable of streaming Netflix content.

Yellin said about 75 to 80 percent of what people watch using the streaming service comes from recommendations, not searches.

Netflix says it uses a wide swath of data points -- including not only titles and genres, but where users rewind and pause videos -- to determine recommendations and inform what content to license and produce.