When I saw the reading list for this week, I was immediately drawn to the article about Netflix, “How Netflix Reverse Engineered Hollywood” by Alexis C. Madrigal. I consider myself to be an avid Netflix binge-watcher, so I was intrigued to see what this blogger had to say about Netflix. The other day my friend and I were talking about how there’s so much on Netflix, but sometimes I still don’t know what to watch. The different categories can be overwhelming to say the least. Madrigal’s article furthered this point I had and opened my eyes to the absurd amount of movie categories Netflix has. This got me wondering if the genres that didn’t even have any movies in them served a purpose at all. Was it supposed to let Netflix know if they should add more to the “”Feel-good Romantic Spanish-Language TV Shows” genre because people were searching for it?
The way Netflix categorizes movies and tv shows reminded me of the “explore” feature on http://8tracks.com. 8tracks is similar to Pandora in the fact that it’s a free Internet radio, but the difference is that you look up playlists compiled by other users rather than stations by an artist or song. When searching for a playlist on 8tracks, you can go to the “explore” tab and from there, you search through the 1,706,776 playlists available using preset tags or by searching for something specific.
8tracks’ system is different because you can add multiple tags. And the tags aren’t just based upon genre; you can also find the right playlist by typing in “any mood, genre or activity”. For example, when I’m looking for playlists to listen to when I study, I normally start with the tag “indie” and then from there depending on my mood, I normally either go with “chill” next or sometimes “folk”.
When I’m working out, I start with “running” and then normally either chose “hip hop” or “pump up”. Even if you search for the same tags every time, you’ll find new playlists because they are constantly being added by other users. I think it would be helpful if Netflix had a similar system for searching through their database. Netflix has so many specific tags, but I always find it somewhat difficult to find something that fits what I want to watch exactly unless I know that I’m looking for something specific like “Grey’s Anatomy” or “Gossip Girl”.