Netflix adds 13.1M subscribers, tops revenue estimates
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
Withering library, reneging on account sharing, poor quality streams, rising prices, addition of ads and so on.
Just how badly do they need to screw their customers for it to have consequences? Is their brand recognition just so strong that they can overcome all of that?
As a consumer, I wish that consumers as a whole were more price- and quality-sensitive and more ad-averse, since that would make it rational for companies to offer me better, cheaper products. But based on revealed preference, they’re not, so they don’t.
If I were a entrepeneur in this space I'd call my startup "Blockbuster's Revenge"
Relative to what? No one cares about this past a certain point.
“We’re focused on the long-term revenue potential here,” said (Co-Ceo) Peters. “We’re very optimistic about it. It’s a huge opportunity."
Seems about what everyone was predicting, and inline with making the watching experience worse. It's surprising they added subscribers. I wonder how many were due to deals with Phone providers etc.
We'll have to see if they end up putting ads in the existing paid service tiers.
Why is the profitable company chasing the business practices of the companies that are burning billions of dollars per year?
Peacock was an example of how a large group of people prefer ads to paying, which means it wasn't worse for them. This was in the context of my comment of Netflix potentially adding a "free" ad supported tier, which could make the content available to those people who couldn't/wouldn't pay.
But, as you point out, them not being profitable suggests that "free" with ads isn't sustainable, meaning a Netflix "free" tier probably wouldn't work either, assuming they were similar to the 15 minutes/hour of ads that Peacock has.
Although I admit this is typically the slipperiest of slopes.
I’ve gone through this process 1000 times over the last year. It’s become muscle memory on my remote. YouTube still hasn’t fixed it.
one of the worst apps on apple tv. it got to the point i don’t even try to like videos. or rewind them. or do anything while they are playing lest i cause a restart. buffering. a random video to start playing, etc.
I often fall asleep watching things, and so want to skip to near the end of an episode to see what I remember. 30 minutes is 180 individual clicks on the remote.
Though I generally just resort to switching to Hulu to watch it there. Why I don't start with Hulu is one of the great mysteries of life.
Came back home to find that Prime has now no idea I even started watching that show. Had to binary search episodes until I found where I had stopped.
My high seas setup can reliably stream movies that are easily 5x the bitrate of any streaming service, without a hitch.
But I was ready to cancel for the first time in years before that, as I realize I had barely touched it in almost a year, with the exception of Alice in Borderland and a handful of other things here and there.
Whenever we get through what they have of One Piece I'll probably cancel until season 2 of the live action comes out (or some other show we like comes back, like maybe Squid Game season 2).
Netflix is turning into cable TV
https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/23/24047817/netflix-is-turni... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39111600)
In the platform space, it inevitably begets platforms full of ads, because it’s one way to maintain that constant growth.
Eventually all platforms that are big enough end up in the same place one way or another.
I think the strategy is to keep pushing until an inflection point is reached and then back off and adjust. Otherwise not trying ads could cost billions.