Comment by AmVess | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AmVess | Hacker News Reader

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In a statement given to Ars Technica, Netflix described the change as follows: "We are testing whether surfacing recommendations between episodes helps members discover stories they will enjoy faster." The reasoning, Netflix's statement says, comes from its last controversial decision: to add auto-playing videos, complete with unmuteable audio, while browsing through Netflix content.

Netflix offered a major rebuttal to at least one Reddit claim, pointing out that the ads for Netflix content are entirely skippable.

I'm guessing they aren't getting views they want, especially with a lot of their shows being duds.

The obvious response would be to increase the quality of their programming. The easy response is to jam their current programming down our throats.

I quit Netflix, and even a single ad about anything is enough to keep me from ever returning.

Trust me, this is just a start. They know people hate autoplay videos, yet they added them anyway. They know people hate ads, but they are going to be using them anyway.

What's next? Product advertising? I don't doubt this. Ad/ad free streaming packages?

Pretty much guaranteed Netflix will start going the Hulu route when they start to run out of user growth and Wall Street wants more and more. What they should be doing is focusing on pure quality, instead of burning so much cash on vast original content (their cash burn is insane.) The current model is nothing but throwing everything against the wall and hoping some of it sticks.

So many of their flops are so obviously going to be massive flops. If they would just focus on putting out new shows like Dark, Stranger Things, their murder docs with a seasonal release calendar, etc they would maintain customers. That and inking deals with non-Disney entities to get solid third party content. HBO has maintained customers and grown with just 3-4 shows keeping people hooked in any given time period.

If they think they can compete with cash rich behemoths like Amazon and Disney they are going to get destroyed. Amazon is going to blow no telling how much on this new Lord of the Rings series...but they don't care, they can afford it. Netflix should go the Apple model, go with quality. Let the others burn cash to get into the space.

Amazon's main issue is just poor discovery when I open up amazon, I want to see what I was last watching, but instead it almost never shows me that, instead it shows me what product I was looking at last, which I probably wasn't going to buy.

I also find their player misses little things that Hulu and Netflix understand, like that whether I want subtitles can depend on what language the content I'm watching is in.

If they had a separate site, media.amazon.com or something, which led to this page: https://www.amazon.com/b/ref=lp_2858778011_nav_shopall_aiv?r...

then it'd fix the issue you're having with them at the moment. It's a really simple fix.

The thing with Netflix is that it can disappear as quickly as it arrived. Given their lack of a large catalogue of movies, the only thing keeping subscribers is a stream of new interesting shows. I don’t think people will keep a subscription just to watch old House of Cards episodes. There is zero lockin. So if they indeed start deteriorating the user experience, they should see the p&l impact immediately.

I wonder, why Netflix doesn't buy some legacy entertainment companies to build up more of a back-catalog? If they've got so much cash to spend on new content, why not spend some of it to own old content too? Part of the strength of the existing media conglomerates is their rights to the accumulation of decades of output. Not everyone is so interested in new stuff (myself, on average I'd rather watch 80s films than new ones).

>why Netflix doesn't buy some legacy entertainment companies

Now that you say that I wish they would have grabbed FOX away from Disney. That would have given them something better to compete with and not allowed Disney to be even larger than it already is.

The auto play and gutted recommendation engine pushed me to the brink, but this? If they roll this out, I’m gone and never looking back. To be honest piracy is looking better every day, between splintering services, weak catalogues, shitty practices and nickel & diming. I’m not getting suckered into the cable bundle model again, and maybe it’s time to remind these media “giants” that the only reason most people don’t pirate is convenience.

Of course soon there will be real Ads too. That’s why you make contents anyway!

And when that moment arrives you will know that the transformation from the "old cable TV" to the "new cable TV" is complete.

There was a time when there were no ads on cable too, seens almost incomprehensible now:

https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/26/arts/will-cable-tv-be-inv...

Product advertising has been happening for years, even in their flagship House of Cards series: http://adage.com/article/media/netflix-s-house-cards-tout-an... . But we use the euphemism "product placement" to obscure the fact that it is really advertising.

The solution is simple. Stop spending large sums to produce crap. Spend small sums to produce crap and admit it is crap (Kevin Hart), and there is an audience for that. Spend large sums on good prior art - eg. rebuild things that were popular elsewhere and inadvertently died - Arrested Development, Futurama, Longmire etc. Pay big sums for the artists - Matt Groening (Disenchanted), Chris Rock, Louis CK, Dave Chappelle (not Kevin Hart).

I think you've been eating memberberries. Futurama should stay dead, it should not be brought back as a zombie. It should be allowed to rest in peace as the fantastic show it was.

We need to move forward, but most of the content I've seen on netflix is crap.

I actually agree, I just meant that the bringing back zombie strategy is a pretty risk free and effective one that can work in some cases.

Maybe not zombies, but premature deaths because they catered to niches that were too small successfully.

And get the artists to make new works.

> Maybe not zombies, but premature deaths because they catered to niches that were too small successfully.

Imagine the PR they would attract if they were able to bring back Firefly. Especially given Nathan Fillion is a big-name actor now.

Yup. It doesn't take a fortune to produce crap or good stuff. The only thing money can do is add some polish.

I assume product placement in their own produced shows is already occuring. Etheir that, or they are leaving money on the table with what looks to me like unsubtle brand visibility.

There is plenty. The most famous example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGDgnp7-uck

Netflix does product advertising already and has done so far a while!

http://m.ign.com/articles/2015/03/02/netflixs-product-placem...

They’ve been double dipping for a while.

Gilmore girls new season was obnoxious because of this.

remember seeing these types of ads on Amazon Prime video and that certainly factored into my decision to cancel Prime. If Netflix does the same I'm pretty sure I'll cancel that as well.

Damn tootin.

Another response would be to have a better sorted and navigable catalog. It boggles my mind that as a French viewer, all the French content is just stuffed together in "European".

I think you're being harsh on Netflix. They have great stuff people have never heard of; advertising doesn't automatically mean it's crap.

When they first started, people came for The Office or Scrubs. Then they started creating their own, and every new show huge press. House of Cards, Orange Is The New Black, etc. But as they add tons more content, they need more traditional ways to get people interested.

People have a "no ads!" stance and forget the way they got into most shows they like are ads. As they make more content themselves (as opposed to The Office or Arrested Development), they need more steady ways to get people interested.

I think this comment is attempting to gaslight the issues the parent comment raises, which are valid and will take more than a trip down memory lane to resolve.

Calling it gaslighting is uncharitable and dismissive. The Overton Window here seems to be generally around "big companies" and "ads" always being bad.

In this case advertising other Netflix shows seems reasonable. It's common practice on most content platforms. I agree it's annoying and I'd rather not have it.

If they always maintain a switch to turn it off, then this is neutral at its worst. I flipped the switch to not have tests conducted on my account, but if this stops being a test then I want to flip this crap off too.

That said, I like it when services play the next episode immediately after the one I just watched. I can just let it continue to progress and stop it anytime I want. I certainly don't want that interrupted by advertisements, whether for in-house Netflix shows or some other crap, it is still just advertisements and part of the reason I pay Netflix at all is because it doesn't have ads, and am willing and able to cancel my account if they turn into Hulu.

I'm not gaslighting anything, I'm simply disagreeing. I dislike ads too, but the answer isn't that "Netflix should spend a ton of money on content, and then hide it away unless someone explicitly looks for it." There's gotta be a happy medium, and for better or for worse, ads work.

If Netflix makes bad content, then I'll be mad they're forcing it on me. But if they make good content, in the long run I'll be happy they're experimenting with as-non-evasive-as-possible ways to get me interested.

To put it another way: it's better if they get more people hooked on more shows and that leads to more subscriptions, rather than them having to resort to crappy third party ads to afford new content.

I'm not gaslighting anything, I'm simply disagreeing. I dislike ads too, but the answer isn't that "Netflix should spend a ton of money on content, and then hide it away unless someone explicitly looks for it." There's gotta be a happy medium.

Here’s a thought... they could let users rate shows, maybe on some 1-5 based scale, then use that information to power recommendations targeted at those users instead of just randomly promoting their disgusting flavors of the day? Then instead of shows dying in obscurity people who would most enjoy them could see them! As a bonus a guy who likes documentaries and dramas wouldn’t have to scroll through children’s cartoons being recommended to him?

Nah, that would never work...

They found that ratings weren't working. They've spent a LOT of money on this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix_Prize ); they wouldn't ditch it without reason.

What they're doing is literally what you're saying: targeted recommendations of their shows. They're just doing it in the format of a video rather than, say, a still image.

Unless "ratings weren't working" means "ratings caused customers to decline to watch content they knew in advance they wouldn't like". Which, from the customer's point of view, means "worked very well."

This is just my experience but I found the previous system far better. I discovered a surprising number of new shows that I liked under that one, shows that I might not have found through other means. In contrast, the new system has been utterly useless and I have learned to completely ignore the percentage scores. The scores are really out of whack with what I like and leaving feedback hasn't improved the matching in any noticeable way.

Ratings worked for the DVDs because they had a massive catalog of high quality material. The streaming stuff is mostly basic cable grade dreck.

What sucks about Netflix app is I can't see IMDB ratings. I'm tired of them promoting 3-5.5/10 crap when I'll only watch decent content 7-8+.

They already "suggest" series and movies prominently in their apps. Now, they're going to shove fucking ads down your throat like a damn TV blairing CNN at the laundromat.

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