After reading the article “How Netflix Reverse Engineered Hollywood” I couldn’t be more intrigued. It was always nice that Netflix would recommend movies to me but I never really put too much thought into it. I would say nine times out of ten, there is a recommendation for me waiting when I finish my series or movie that I’ll actually watch. For example, (and please don’t judge me for my taste in television here), I had just finished watching One Tree Hill when Netflix recommended that I watch Desperate Housewives. These series are so completely different in terms of what they’re about, the age demographic, the setting, etc. but Netflix knew based on who else watched it and everything else that I had watched that I would love it too! And now, thanks to Alexis Madrigal, we know that this is because of the absurd amounts of categorization, metadata and refined vocabulary that Netflix uses.
For me personally, I found it interesting that the categorizations were so specific. It’s hard to fathom that there were people that went through all of the movies available on Netflix to tag them with enormous amounts of metadata – and some of the categories are so oddly specific. This got me thinking about Pandora. Similar to Netflix, Pandora uses what you like/ have listened to in order to recommend new music. Although there are differences – Pandora is music, Netflix is film, Pandora uses “thumbs up” and Netflix uses stars for ratings, I have to imagine that Pandora must have a similarly specific metadata process it uses in order to produce music that people will enjoy. Like Madrigal said, “The better Netflix shows that it knows you, the likelier you are to stick around.” And this is true for Pandora as well. If I put on a station that gives me five songs in a row that I don’t really care for, I’m going to use a different site to listen to music. However, the main difference between these two sites is probably that Pandora is free while Netflix costs about eight dollars per month. Because of this, it would be more detrimental for Netflix to lose its customers. Of course Pandora wants to be a successful site (which it already is) but they don’t have a tangible loss when people stop listening to them.
Madrigal, Alexis C. “How Netflix Reverse Engineered Hollywood.” The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 02 Jan. 2014. Web. 20 Oct. 2014.