The article “How Netflix Reverse Engineered Hollywood” from this week’s readings discussed the author’s project to dissect Netflix’s genre system. He considered everything from the site’s tagging process to the syntax behind its famously niche genres. Though Alexis C. Madrigal was interested in Netflix’s data collection, his focus was largely on how the data contributed to Netflix’s unique categorization system. At one point in his story, Madrigal visits Netflix’s VP of Product, Todd Yellin, and although “he seems impressed at [Madrigal’s] nerdiness, he patiently explains that we’ve merely skimmed one end-product of the entire Netflix data infrastructure. There is so much more data and a whole lot more intelligence baked into the system than we’ve captured.” Madrigal’s focus was rather specific, fitting considering he was analyzing genres known for their alarming specificity, but his conversation with Yellin hinted that Netflix is employing data in many innovate ways, including in the production of original content.
Netflix’s foray into original content is interesting because it has flouted many of the conventions of Hollywood filmmaking. For example, the website releases its content all at once instead of making one episode each week and its executives have refused to publish ratings because they are irrelevant to Netflix’s system. Such policies have produced many a think-piece about the television industry’s potential for change, many of which focus on how Netflix’s access to user data fuels the company’s original programming decisions. Although plenty of studios lean on statistics and ratings, Netflix has a pretty honest view of not only what people are watching but how. According to Yellin, Netflix knows if a user “plays one title, what did they play after, before, what did they abandon after five minutes?” (The Guardian) I’d be interested to learn if Netflix’s data is more helpful than that available to more traditional content creators and if other media platforms feel pressured to adopt certain features of Netflix’s data-driven model.
Source: http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/feb/23/netflix-viewer-data-house-of-cards