I stopped really paying attention to Netflix's curation algorithms when I saw "The Santa Clause" categorized under "SciFi". I mean, I guess technically, but that's not really what I was looking for...
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
#52Re: HBO Max taking on Netflix with human curation instead of relying on algorithms
#53This is a hard problem. And it makes a great interview question too!
Recent PM interview question I've been using: You're the PM at Netflix handling the home screen. How do you determine how shows get promoted editorially vs algorithmically recommended? Walk through metrics/principles/trade-offs and how it impacts various parts of the biz.
Re: HBO Max taking on Netflix with human curation instead of relying on algorithms
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Good is subjective. That’s why they have a personalization engine to make recommendations.
Re: HBO Max taking on Netflix with human curation instead of relying on algorithms
#55As 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…
It feels to me like the balkanization of streaming services was inevitable and Netflix getting into the content game was just a logical response to remain relevant. If the catalog is what garners subscribers then a streaming service without its own catalog is basically fucked in the long term.
This balkanization is a good thing. I'd far rather have the choice between many competing providers each offering a service at £8/month, than have the choice to take or leave a single expensive all-in-one subscription, like cable.
It's also good that market forces are driving content-creation.
Re: HBO Max taking on Netflix with human curation instead of relying on algorithms
#56"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.
I would really dig lists from people I trust or follow. Get directors, actors, artists, editors, critics to really curate some lists and I'm in. Even better if they can add a couple of lines to tie the list within a theme or idea, not just a dump of series/films.
Only problem I see is it might end up being just marketing and they'll just use the celebrity name and dump the films they want to push.
Re: HBO Max taking on Netflix with human curation instead of relying on algorithms
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
In my opinion Netflix tries too hard to make me watch more than I care to. In particular why can't I just by default enjoy the credits of a movie or series I just finished, instead I have to quickly use my remote so Netflix doesn't try show a trailer for something else, and there is no option to turn this off. Relatedly their tvOS app gets laggy after just tens of seconds of browsing and it's been like this for over…
They've recently added an option to disable autoplay/skipping. I'm using it.
Re: HBO Max taking on Netflix with human curation instead of relying on algorithms
#58This is like when Apple said their Music platform would be more human curated rather than algorithms like competitors such as Spotify. But the reason why I love Spotify's recommendations and not Apple's is because Spotify focuses on algorithms and does them so well. Same with Netflix, in my experience they truly know what I will like to watch, they seem to know what shows I'll love and what shows I won't love but wil…
In contrast to other commenters, I loved manually curated Apple Music playlists, I found so much great music through them in first 6 months
of using their service. You could really feel that they were created by people with real passion for underground and experimental music, on par with best user-curated Spotify playlists. When they switched to algorithm based recommendations its quality tanked and I moved back to Spotify because it has better overall user experience on desktop and social features. Spotify's algorithms has never, ever introduced me to interesting new artist, it only suggest to me things that I either already know and like, already know and dislike or new things that pretend to be good but there is no original though behind them. Fortunately, a lot of independent music critics and enthusiasts have their own playlists with good, deep cuts - but you need to find them outside of Spotify, because their discovery features are so bad. I miss early Apple Music so, so much. It reminded me of prime years of Last.fm.
Re: HBO Max taking on Netflix with human curation instead of relying on algorithms
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I think Netflix is going with the Blumhouse method of production[1]. They're giving a bunch of money to people and let them make stuff that (some) people will like.
Some of will be bad, most average and a tiny bit will make huge piles of money (bring new users).
Re: HBO Max taking on Netflix with human curation instead of relying on algorithms
#60just weaponise YouTube content creators.
My kids used to laugh at Villager News, a dumb but occasionally funny skit show using 3D animation to copy Minecraft. Amazon Video now runs the show on its streaming service.
Basically YouTube became a method to make pilots for tv series.
Imagine all the weird but low cost documentaries i try and find on YouTube - Tods Workshop, Primitive Technology. There will be a thousand such people in thousands of niches.
Google could just flip on a content arm and hand each channel a producer and a decent camera and just own half the content. The other half is documentary / reportage rather than essays.
Honestly thinking of content as action shows or sci-fi 100 episodes is missing the point entirely. Content here on in is still high quality but aimed at a 100,000 people not 20 million.