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How useful was the Netflix Prize challenge for Netflix?

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Re: How useful was the Netflix Prize challenge for Netflix?

#51

Post by kens »

BB212 wrote: post #20

I think the discussion misses the most important part: The goal of the Netflix prize wasn't to come up with the best algorithm - it was to make the Netflix brand exciting and legitimate to engineers. At the time, Netflix wasn't super high-tech and I'm sure it was hard for them to get the top talent they needed. It seems silly in retrospect now, but I'm certain the reason this was approved was because they wanted the…

> make the Netflix brand exciting and legitimate to engineers

As a serious question, why do people include Netflix in the acronym FAANG, which I see on HN all the time? Is there something special about Netflix? Netflix is around the #14 tech company, so it's strange to see Netflix in there instead of Microsoft. Or is the use of FAANG divorced from its literal meaning?

Re: How useful was the Netflix Prize challenge for Netflix?

#52

Post by bcrosby95 »

IIRC they announced pretty quickly that they wouldn't be using the winning solution due to complexity for little gain. A common thought at the time was that it was worth it because it showed how far they would have to go to make their algorithm better and that it wasn't worth it.

Re: How useful was the Netflix Prize challenge for Netflix?

#53

Post by danielharan »

I learned about AI by participating in the challenge, and ended up co-founding an AI company as a result.

Netflix got more than 1 million dollar in free advertising from it, and are still getting brand value out of it today. They implemented some of the algorithms, and probably got a 10X ROI through retention alone.

As mentioned in the Quora answer, they were also able to recruit top talent - and that's much harder to put an ROI figure on.

Re: How useful was the Netflix Prize challenge for Netflix?

#54

Post by ffggvv »

kens wrote: post #51
BB212 wrote: post #20

I think the discussion misses the most important part: The goal of the Netflix prize wasn't to come up with the best algorithm - it was to make the Netflix brand exciting and legitimate to engineers. At the time, Netflix wasn't super high-tech and I'm sure it was hard for them to get the top talent they needed. It seems silly in retrospect now, but I'm certain the reason this was approved was because they wanted the…

> make the Netflix brand exciting and legitimate to engineers As a serious question, why do people include Netflix in the acronym FAANG, which I see on HN all the time? Is there something special about Netflix? Netflix is around the #14 tech company, so it's strange to see Netflix in there instead of Microsoft. Or is the use of FAANG divorced from its literal meaning?

it was a originally just FANG with one A. and it was just partially coined because it’s a catchy term. it’s also pretty dated at this point. and if you took the N out it would not be appropriate

Re: How useful was the Netflix Prize challenge for Netflix?

#55

Post by jaxr »

Karunamon wrote: post #45
rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who's more likely to keep renewing their subscription? The person who uses Netflix to watch a ton of trash that they think is "just ok," or the person who merely watches 1 or 2 things per month that they actually enjoy? I'm certain Netflix ran the numbers, and determined that a high-usage customer is the most valuable.

Netflix doesn't run ads for anything but their own content, right? It would seem to me their best customer is one who pays their monthly sub and then never uses the service.

That does not correspond to reality. Netflix (said they) will cancel accounts that have remained unused for long periods of time [1]

[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/net...

Re: How useful was the Netflix Prize challenge for Netflix?

#56

Post by kuiper0x2 »

ffggvv wrote: post #54
kens wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> make the Netflix brand exciting and legitimate to engineers As a serious question, why do people include Netflix in the acronym FAANG, which I see on HN all the time? Is there something special about Netflix? Netflix is around the #14 tech company, so it's strange to see Netflix in there instead of Microsoft. Or is the use of FAANG divorced from its literal meaning?

it was a originally just FANG with one A. and it was just partially coined because it’s a catchy term. it’s also pretty dated at this point. and if you took the N out it would not be appropriate

The N should be Nvidia

Re: How useful was the Netflix Prize challenge for Netflix?

#57

Post by setr »

fouc wrote: post #44
setr wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO the recommendations are no good because they fundamentally take the wrong approach — rather than ask the user what they like, they try to guess what you like based on usage (which really doesn't correlate well — I watch a lot of garbage because I can’t find things I like, and I don’t have anything better to do.) And they don’t ask because users don’t provide useful answers. But users don’t provide useful answers,…

I think you've hit the nail on the head here. There's no good way to express how I feel when I'm watching a show or at the end of the show. There's no "Holy shit, this is amazing" vs "This is decent" etc - where sentiment is clearly attached to the rating. A 5 star or 3 star rating scale alone isn't quite good enough..

I don’t think that’s correct. 1-5 stars is sufficient. The problem is that you need reason to continuously update the values as your preferences update over time (what was once a 5-star is now a 4-star, because that last movie I saw was phenomenal)

What you need is sufficient reason to do so — the values need to actually be useful to you to make updating an act of sanity (unlike now, where it’s purely an act of futility). Feeding the algorithm is not itself sufficient (though necessary, and currently ineffective). The ideal recommendation system would encourage rating entry as a ritual act, and more importantly, rating updates an act that derives real value.

Only then will you have good data, and from good data, a dumb algorithm will suffice.

Re: How useful was the Netflix Prize challenge for Netflix?

#58

Post by [deleted] »

kens wrote: post #51
BB212 wrote: post #20

I think the discussion misses the most important part: The goal of the Netflix prize wasn't to come up with the best algorithm - it was to make the Netflix brand exciting and legitimate to engineers. At the time, Netflix wasn't super high-tech and I'm sure it was hard for them to get the top talent they needed. It seems silly in retrospect now, but I'm certain the reason this was approved was because they wanted the…

> make the Netflix brand exciting and legitimate to engineers As a serious question, why do people include Netflix in the acronym FAANG, which I see on HN all the time? Is there something special about Netflix? Netflix is around the #14 tech company, so it's strange to see Netflix in there instead of Microsoft. Or is the use of FAANG divorced from its literal meaning?

[deleted]

Re: How useful was the Netflix Prize challenge for Netflix?

#59

Post by derangedHorse »

kens wrote: post #51
BB212 wrote: post #20

I think the discussion misses the most important part: The goal of the Netflix prize wasn't to come up with the best algorithm - it was to make the Netflix brand exciting and legitimate to engineers. At the time, Netflix wasn't super high-tech and I'm sure it was hard for them to get the top talent they needed. It seems silly in retrospect now, but I'm certain the reason this was approved was because they wanted the…

> make the Netflix brand exciting and legitimate to engineers As a serious question, why do people include Netflix in the acronym FAANG, which I see on HN all the time? Is there something special about Netflix? Netflix is around the #14 tech company, so it's strange to see Netflix in there instead of Microsoft. Or is the use of FAANG divorced from its literal meaning?

It's probably included because of the sky-high salaries they offer since FAANG is typically an acronym used to refer to top software companies to work for. From what I've heard from friends, Microsoft typically pays the least out of all the companies that make up the acronym and their technologies are also seen as less trendy than the other companies listed.

Re: How useful was the Netflix Prize challenge for Netflix?

#60

Post by Wowfunhappy »

setr wrote: post #28
Supermancho wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At the time, Netflix wasn't super high-tech I will admit that it was interesting to see what algorithms were poised to be cutting edge in media recommendation. The result was rather disappointing to me. Netflix STILL isn't that exciting from anything but a compensation standpoint. The problems at netflix are about programming, while the technical challenges are droll at best.

IMO the recommendations are no good because they fundamentally take the wrong approach — rather than ask the user what they like, they try to guess what you like based on usage (which really doesn't correlate well — I watch a lot of garbage because I can’t find things I like, and I don’t have anything better to do.) And they don’t ask because users don’t provide useful answers. But users don’t provide useful answers,…

Or, like, maybe just let me turn off the auto recommendations if I want to? It makes me actively uncomfortable to think that everything I watch on Netflix is going to change what I see in the future!
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