It's pretty funny that even this headline shows the bizarre marketing problem WB created in choosing "HBO Max" as their streaming service name: HBO isn't taking on Netflix, the service is for all WB content.
HBO Max taking on Netflix with human curation instead of relying on algorithms
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Re: HBO Max taking on Netflix with human curation instead of relying on algorithms
#32As Netflix has moved away from carrying lots of other people's movies to largely producing their own in-house TV shows, it feels like they barely have enough content to need an algorithm to curate it. They just show the same new Netflix originals over and over in ever category. I'm sure Netflix has piles of data that shows this is the best strategy. It just seems like a differentiated curation strategy doesn't matter…
They produced 371 tv shows and movies last year. Combine that with previous years, it’s a lot of content that they own.
Yeah but how many of them are good? I can probably count the amount of Netflix original movies that I've heard discussed with one hand. And when it comes to stuff like Bird Box, the talk doesn't really even go with the quality.
Re: HBO Max taking on Netflix with human curation instead of relying on algorithms
#33They should work on their search. I was trying to find the movie "Paul" and typing "Paul" in the search had the exact match as the fourth or fifth result in the upper right corner of the screen. It took me a while to find it.
Re: HBO Max taking on Netflix with human curation instead of relying on algorithms
#34I wasn't old enough to remember it, but when search engines tried to do this in the 90s, it became clear that people preferred machine recommendations. See yahoo directory, look smart.
I don’t think it became clear people prefer algorithms, I think the fundamental problem was with the millions of websites Yahoo couldn’t scale. HBO is operating on a much more tractable problem. Human curation may work better here.
And it's not obvious that people want to discover art the same way they want to discover information (obviously not implying that Google can't be used to discover art).
Re: HBO Max taking on Netflix with human curation instead of relying on algorithms
#35If they could show the IMDB rating, it would be enough for me.
They won't even show their own rating anymore.
I assume it's counterproductive to the goal of capturing eyeballs for as long as possible.
Re: HBO Max taking on Netflix with human curation instead of relying on algorithms
#36As Netflix has moved away from carrying lots of other people's movies to largely producing their own in-house TV shows, it feels like they barely have enough content to need an algorithm to curate it. They just show the same new Netflix originals over and over in ever category. I'm sure Netflix has piles of data that shows this is the best strategy. It just seems like a differentiated curation strategy doesn't matter…
That's not been my experience. My recommendations (mostly Anime and Sci-Fi) is vastly different to my wife's (mostly American comedies with a strong emphasis on romcoms). The kids have a children's profile so theirs is vastly different again.
It's fair to say our individual viewing habits are vastly different to the others. Maybe if there was more overlap you might not notice any difference with the recommendations.
Re: HBO Max taking on Netflix with human curation instead of relying on algorithms
#37I wasn't old enough to remember it, but when search engines tried to do this in the 90s, it became clear that people preferred machine recommendations. See yahoo directory, look smart.
I don’t think it became clear people prefer algorithms, I think the fundamental problem was with the millions of websites Yahoo couldn’t scale. HBO is operating on a much more tractable problem. Human curation may work better here.
HBO will never scale itself beyond it's own ability to comprehend itself, or, if that happens, it's quite a ways off. Considering HBO is throwing hundreds of thousands of dollars at each of these shows paying twenty bucks for manual curation on top of that doesn't sound unreasonable.
Re: HBO Max taking on Netflix with human curation instead of relying on algorithms
#38"human-first platform" Yeah because netflix loves those robots it serves. At least netflix doesn't have a name problem... Three different HBO products... yeah that's gonna work. /s
HBO Max is just their newly renamed HBO Go and Now unification. If you had either Go or Now before, you now have Max. It's not really that complicated.
Re: HBO Max taking on Netflix with human curation instead of relying on algorithms
#39It makes sense to me because HBO doesn't really have the same type of catalog. They also don't have the data. In my experience, people subscribe to HBO because they have the content and people are already aware of their content. It makes curation way easier. HBO Max is going to exclusively have the entire Friends collection and Ghibli collection. I know and am aware of what HBO has to offer. On the flip side, Netflix…
HBO Max has the entire WB + others back catalog, and represents some of the most productive studios out there. Rumor has it, they’re also going to be making exclusives.
Even knowing what they have across brands is nontrivial.
Re: HBO Max taking on Netflix with human curation instead of relying on algorithms
#40"Curators, ranging from WarnerMedia editors to celebrities, put together a list of movies and TV shows they’re watching" ok so how do I know which human's taste is the same as mine. If only there was a recommendation engine for that.
You beat me to it. I certainly want to be able to watch things recommended by $celebrity2.
Well, with a decent catalog, and if it's not really marketing bullshit, I would certainly like to see a list of 's favorites.