Hacking NetFlix

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings Pledges to Give Away Half of His Wealth

CNN Money reports that Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has joined 91 billionaires pledging to give away half of his wealth. The Giving Pledge, started by Bill & Melinda Gates and Warren Buffet, has encouraged billionaires to pledge half of their wealth to charity.

"We are thrilled to join with other fortunate people to pledge a majority of our assets to be invested in others," Hastings and Quillin wrote in a letter posted on the Giving Pledge's website. "We hope through this community that we can learn as we go, and do our best to make a positive difference for many."

Netflix #22 on E! Online's 100 Best Things in Pop Culture

Netflix was #22 on E! Online's 100 Best Things in Pop Culture, and I love the reason Netflix streaming made the list: 

Above all, it's about living an approximation of the dream life as promised by that TV commercial from the turn-of-the-21 century, the one with the tumbleweed motel that featured "every movie ever made in any language, anytime, day or night."

Now, of course, Netflix doesn't stream "every movie ever made." It doesn't even stream every movie Howard Stern ever made, and he's only made one. That's why we said its service offers an approximation of the dream life. But still, you have to admit, it's pretty close—pretty, awfully, tantalizingly close. Anytime, day or night, you can watch anything, almost.

I still remember that commercial, and unfortunately we're still a long way away from being able to "watch every movie ever made." Someday...

Time Magazine on Using Netflix as a Babysitter

Time Magazine on why parents like to use Netflix as a babysitter instead of commercial TV.

Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Todd Juenger conducted focus groups interviewing 16 mothers about when and how they allowed their children to watch television. In a report, he found that “content control, commercial avoidance and time management” were their key concerns when finding entertainment for their kids. The moms were worried that the commercials usually associated with kids channels were not only selling them on unhealthy snacks but also lowering their attention spans. Netflix lacks commercials and gives parents more direct control of what’s coming down the content pipe, which moms liked.

C'mon, parent, fess up: Have you used Netflix as a babysitter?

Does Netflix Need More 3rd Party Applications?

Netflix has had a developer API for years, and a number of developers have created interesting applications like InstantWatcher and Feedfliks (you can view a directory of apps at http://developer.netflix.com/api_gallery). Hamish McKenzie from PandoDaily thinks Netflix needs more applications, like Spotify:

Spotify’s real killer play – just like Facebook’s – is that it is a platform for third-party apps that dramatically improve the experience.

That is what Netflix is missing.

Netflix already promotes third-party apps, but they all live outside the Netflix platform. Users have to download them and add them to whatever device they’re using to view Netflix content. That’s fine, but casual users like me are never going to go to that effort. And, to be honest, I only found out about those apps through doing research for this post.

Did you know Netflix had 3rd party apps? What type of Netflix application would you like to see?

Mercury News Covers Cord Cutters & 1.5 Million Cut the Cord in 2011

Chris O'Brien from the The San Jose Mercury News wrote about his experience in cutting the cord. 

Now came the hard part: Figuring out how to watch all the shows we used to watch. The Panasonic Viera comes with a large selection of apps installed, including Netflix, Hulu Plus and Amazon. We are longtime Netflix subscribers, so that didn't cost anything extra. We also had Amazon Prime, a $79 annual service that gives you free shipping and access to a modest selection of free "Prime" TV shows and movies.The one addition we made was to subscribe to Hulu Plus for $7.99 a month. This gave us a full library of shows we watch on Fox, NBC and a collection of secondary cable channels. So far, so good.

I also paid $99 to get Apple TV, which allows me to turn the TV into a stereo by streaming our music collection from our PC. I can also download videos right from the iTunes store and mirror content I'm playing on my iPad or iPhone right onto the TV. It's kind of awesome, actually.Mostly, it's been great. But there are a few pitfalls. We have to remember what shows we can find on which service. Even then, there are random headaches. For instance, we're fans of "30 Rock," which is available on Hulu Plus. But when we punched it up the other night, we saw a notice saying "Web only."

In related news paidContent reported that more than 1.5 million people cut the cord in 2011.

In fact, belying several earlier research studies, which said growth of U.S. multi-channel services has slowed significantly but not stopped, Nielsen’s latest “Cross-Platform Report” says the number of U.S. homes paying a multichannel provider for TV services last year actually declined by 1.5 million, or about 1.5 percent.

Subscription gains made by telco providers AT&T and Verizon (about 1.1 million) and satellite service companies DirecTV and Dish (added 280,000 subscribers) could not offset the over 2.9 million subscriptions lost by cable providers, Nielsen reports.

Will 2012 be the year that cord cutting takes off?

Fast Company Reports that Amazon "Massively Inflates its Streaming Library Size"

Fast Company reports that "Amazon Massively Inflates its Streaming Library Size." While Amazon claims 17,000 titles, they only offer 1,745 movies and the rest are TV shows.

Amazon reached that number by counting each episode of a TV series as an individual TVshow. For example, Amazon does not count 24 as one TV show; rather, it counts every episode in all eight seasons toward its library of 17,000 movies and television shows. So, according to Amazon's logic, Kiefer Sutherland stars in 192 TV shows. Amazon counts The X-Files more than 200 times and Grey's Anatomy 170 times. Sure, there's an arguable distinction between all the offshoots of Power Rangers (Mighty Morphin, Dino Thunder, Space Patrol Delta). But by Amazon's figures, Power Rangers-related episodes are counted as about 715 shows in its streaming library--that is, 4.2% of the 17,000 movies and television shows Amazon says it offers. 

Netflix is also mentioned in the article:

Netflix declined to provide the specific tally. "We do not disclose the number of viewables on Netflix," a spokesperson said. "A primary reason is that the title count fluctuates a lot as titles come in and out of window. Additionally, while we do have the biggest streaming library, we don’t want people to measure us by title count. The number of titles does not equate to member happiness or viewing pleasure."

Daniel Choi, the creator of InstantWatcher.com, a website that uses Netflix's API to track streaming movies and TV shows, says the number of movies and TV shows available on Netflix's streaming service is significantly less than 60,000. "According to our count, it's about 13,000," Choi explains, indicating that about 9,500 of those titles are movies. "But there are two different ways of counting. We count all television series as one title each. If you split up the TV series into individual episodes, that count will go up."

via Consumerist.

Did Netflix Upset Hacker Group Anonymous by Forming FLIXPAC?

Forbes reports that hacker group Anonymous has called for a boycott of Netflix in response to the formation of the FLIXPAC and possible support of SOPA-like legislation (which Netflix denies).

The news that Netflix is expanding its presence on Capitol Hill isn’t going over well with the Internet community. First, headlines started traveling around the web associating FLIXPAC with the hugely unpopular SOPA, and now a popular Anonymous-affiliated twitter account has started urging its followers to boycott the video streaming service.

“Dear freedom lovers, @netflix is forming a PAC to push for a new version of SOPA, cancel your sub and go back to pirating!” tweeted @youranonnews.

AP Reports That Netflix Streaming Won't Have Every Title (Obviously)

This AP story was widely covered despite stating the obvious: Gaps in Netflix's online library likely to persist. 

No matter how much Netflix Inc. is willing to pay for the rights, some online video remains off-limits.

Major movie studios are refusing to license the rights to most of their latest movies at the same time they're released on DVDs. Premium cable channels such as HBO and Showtime also are withholding their most popular series, including "Game of Thrones" and "Dexter," because they are worried about losing subscribers if the content is available on Netflix's less expensive Internet service.

Due to exclusive agreements, competition (HBO, Showtime), and other factors it's unlikely that any streaming service will have a large percentage of the titles available on DVD. 

The story did report current title counts: 60,000 streaming titles and 140,000 DVDs at Netflix.

Thanks to FearNo1 for sending this in.

Procter & Gamble Bans Netflix & Pandora at Work

Cincinnati.com reports that Procter & Gamble is banning Netflix & Pandora from the office network because of bandwith demands and worries about productivity.

The demand for desktop videos, music and other non-business entertainment delivered to PCs through P&G’s Internet network was so great that it exceeded the company’s capacity, “requiring immediate intervention,” according to an internal memo obtained by The Enquirer.

The digital emergency led P&G to block Pandora and the movie and video site Netflix “as a first step,” and to warn workers about using the company’s Internet network for personal reasons.

Does your company block Netflix?

via AdAge.

Financial Post Takes a Look at How Netflix Recommends Titles

The Financial Post Tech Desk sheds some light on how they come up with the rather strange Netflix categories like "critically acclaimed visually striking movies." 

Each piece of content in the Netflix library is marked with more than 100 tags. The company employs a team of about 25 freelancers to watch and tag video. Most live in L.A. and do script coverages — a type of pre-reading — for studios. Others are moms who want to work part time tagging children’s films.

Netflix tried employing similar experts to watch movies and intuitively assign related titles. But mathematics beat out human expertise.

“It fails miserably next to an algorithmic approach,” Yellin says of the expert test. “You get your best people to come up with those lists and they don’t do very well. What does much better is a combination of metadata and clustering.”

Netflix's ability to accurately suggest movies & TV shows give them a competitve advantage over guides and channel surfing hundreds of channels.

Are they getting better or worse at recommendations?

via Netflix on Twitter.