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The Independent UK
The Independent UK
National
Andrew Griffin

Amazon Prime launches profiles to give people personalised recommendations

A general view of atmosphere during the Amazon Prime Summer Soiree hosted by Erin and Sara Foster held at Sunset Towers on July 16, 2015 in West Hollywood, California. ( Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images for Amazon )

Amazon Prime has finally launched "profiles", allowing people to keep their viewing histories and recommendations separate.

Until now, watching on the service has all been kept on the same account, meaning a whole household's preferences are inevitably pulled together in one profile.

The feature allows up to six different profiles on one account, allowing them to watch without their personal tastes interfering with everyone else's recommendations.

As well as keeping viewing history separate, the feature means that children can use a devoted kids account that will keep them from watching more adult content.

Such profiles have been standard on rivals such as Netflix for years, but it is the first time that Amazon Prime Video is included at the moment.

The feature is only available in "selected countries" for now, and was first spotted by NDTV in India. It works on Amazon's own devices such as the Fire TV, but also those from other companies such as the Apple TV and Google's Chromecast.

"Prime Video allows you to create and manage multiple profiles within your account with content personalised separately to each profile," an Amazon help page reads. "Each profile will have separate recommendations, watch history, season progress and watch list based on individual profile activity.

"You can have up to six user profiles (1 default primary profile + 5 additional profiles either adult or kids) within Prime Video on a single Amazon account."

Amazon's decision to allow six different profiles gives it one more than Netflix's five.

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