I'm not really sure the metaphor holds up, Netflix was a jetliner compared to a minivan. We still had movie rental stores in the late 00s.
But what if I want a faster horse?
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Re: But what if I want a faster horse?
#202For any given thing or category of thing , a tiny minority of the human population will be enthusiasts of that thing , but those enthusiasts will have an outsize effect in determining everyone else's taste for that thing . For example, very few people have any real interest in driving a car at 200 MPH, but Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Porsches are widely understood as desirable cars, because the people who are into car…
which is also what I feel about the Spotify algorthim at times — no matter what I'm listening to, it invariably brings me back to what it thinks are my "old reliables" once it gets onto recommending stuff. I might just listen to it, if I have it on in the background, which then in turn feeds the algorithm that it made the "correct choice", but it's a million miles away from, say, listening to a radio DJ where you lik…
> if I have it on in the background, which then in turn feeds the algorithm that it made the "correct choice"
I have a very horrible case of this. One day at night, I slept listening to lofi playlist. The next week all my recommendations were screwed. Horrible assumption on the part of algorithm.
Re: But what if I want a faster horse?
#203If people can't find a sustainable business model around that thing you want, it's just not going to be widely available. It's hard to say for sure if Netflix could have/should have kept going in the direction they were going in 2012. But they didn't seem to think so. You can't necessarily count on businesses springing up to satisfy your personal interests and tastes. Especially large-scale businesses, which are alwa…
The problem is with the definition of “sustainable business model.” Could you maintain a profitable business and continue steady growth? Sure. Could you become a unicorn and IPO within the next 5 years? Unlikely.
Or, in other words, our entire society is focused on creating fake business that can only survive in a monopolized market (or can't even then).
That's because the money is concentrated into a few dumb people with limited capacity to invest it. So they'll push it into a handful of companies that will destroy whatever sustainable companies that exist on the same market.
Re: But what if I want a faster horse?
#204For any given thing or category of thing , a tiny minority of the human population will be enthusiasts of that thing , but those enthusiasts will have an outsize effect in determining everyone else's taste for that thing . For example, very few people have any real interest in driving a car at 200 MPH, but Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Porsches are widely understood as desirable cars, because the people who are into car…
“Tyranny of the the marginal user”
https://nothinghuman.substack.com/p/the-tyranny-of-the-margi...
Re: But what if I want a faster horse?
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the cycle I keep seeing: Most great products start out for enthusiasts and often by enthusiasts. They’re opinionated, sharp, sometimes rough, but exciting. Then VC funding comes in, and the product has to appeal to a broader audience. Things get smoothed out and the metrics rule decisions. Eventually, the original enthusiasts feel left out. The product’s no longer for them. So a new product comes out, started…
To simplify: 1. Innovate. 2. Exploit. You start by innovating a "fast horse". This gains you early adopters who pull in a larger audience. A horse can only be so fast, so continued innovation might lead to something more like a car. This will only cause you to bleed users. Stick to the horse. Instead of continuing to innovate endlessly, you switch to exploitation. Fire the visionaries. They're just a waste of payroll…
Porsche is easy to replace only if you bought it as just another fast car. If you bought it for the design, the legacy, or what the brand means to you, it’s not so easy.
Netflix has their content as their moat. Even if someone today builds a better version of what Netflix used to be, it wouldn't matter. They won’t have the rights and licenses to the shows and movies. That’s what keeps people from switching.
Porsche has to keep earning you as a customer with every new model. Netflix just needs to keep you watching.
Re: But what if I want a faster horse?
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would say they're popular because they are expensive. It's bragging rights, conspicuous consumption…
If it was just expense, then Koenigsegg would be a household name. Most enthusiasts will know them, but the average person won't. There's something more that leads culture in such a way to uphold a particular brand.
Ferrari and Lamborghini predate Koenigsegg by a generation so my guess is it's about the history.
Re: But what if I want a faster horse?
#207For any given thing or category of thing , a tiny minority of the human population will be enthusiasts of that thing , but those enthusiasts will have an outsize effect in determining everyone else's taste for that thing . For example, very few people have any real interest in driving a car at 200 MPH, but Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Porsches are widely understood as desirable cars, because the people who are into car…
"Shoving content into the faces of an indiscriminating userbase" maximizes eyeball time which maximizes ad dollars. Netflix's financials are a bit more opaque but I think that's the key driver of the carcinisation story here, the thing for which "what the median user wants" is ultimately a proxy. Likewise, all social media converges on one model. Strava, which started out a weirder platform for serious athletes, is n…
> "Shoving content into the faces of an indiscriminating userbase" maximizes eyeball time which maximizes ad dollars
I mean that's not really the case for paid services without ads like Netflix. They lose money the more you watch. Ideally you'd continue to pay for the subscription but never watch anything.
Re: But what if I want a faster horse?
#208For any given thing or category of thing , a tiny minority of the human population will be enthusiasts of that thing , but those enthusiasts will have an outsize effect in determining everyone else's taste for that thing . For example, very few people have any real interest in driving a car at 200 MPH, but Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Porsches are widely understood as desirable cars, because the people who are into car…
Luxury watches are a good analogy too. A $5 watch from the gas station will give you the time just fine but there’s a market for watches costing hundreds of thousands of dollars.
You don't even need a watch. Smartphones can tell you time (you can configure to show times for many timezones) yet there is a market for watches (luxury or normal)
Re: But what if I want a faster horse?
#209The TikTok-ification of advertising supported platforms is terrible, but makes sense to me. LinkedIn pivoted from making money on subscriptions and fees for job postings to ads, which mean the leading drivers are 'engagement' e.g. time you spend doom scrolling on their platform. This will end in disaster for the platform as a place to find jobs or employees. Netflix I understand much less. They make money from subscr…
I think Netflix faces the problem that measuring the causality between a user watching specific content and choosing to stay subscribed is super hard. Therefore, they focus on a metric that is easy to measure, namely time spent in the app. This is likely not the metric they should be optimizing for, but since they _can_ measure it, it becomes the target anyway.
Re: But what if I want a faster horse?
#210Spotify doesn’t seem like a good example. I use Spotify to search for artists and listen to songs from their albums. I make my own playlists. If you basically want a better iTunes, it seems like it still works for that.
(You do have to ignore the other features, but that doesn’t seem very hard.)