Before yahoo died it’s slow and painful death it was once the hottest internet company. It had top engineering and was a household name. However over time the company stopped viewing tech as its competitive advantage and focused instead on content. It spent tons of money on content (see how Mark Cuban became a billionaire) but it couldn’t out compete the entire rest of the internet. Producing your own content doesn’t scale, with the amount of content being created now, even if you have the best content, you can only hold the users attention for a short while. Is Netflix heading down this same path? It’s spending tons of money making Netflix originals that it releases all at once and allow users to binge in a few days. That seems like high user acquisition cost but low retention. Furthermore, its streaming technology is no longer a competitive advantage, pretty much every media company has its own platform nowadays. #netflix
Netflix is in the business of entertainment, where quality content with IP is the single most important selling point. So investing in creating original content or buying out IP is absolutely the key.
It doesn’t seem Netflix has any competitive advantage over incumbents such as Disney when it comes to content creation. Wouldn’t it have been better to focus on tech, perhaps doing a partnership model with content creators like YouTube?
Netflix has every advantage you can think of except established IPs. From tech, user base, data, content to budget. And Netflix produces more hit shows and have more nominations than Disney+ You don't know shit about this industry
Umm I’m pretty sure the company we work for is the reason why yahoo died a slow and painful death.
It’s possible yahoo could have won if they had identified the importance of search technology, instead they viewed it as a race to the bottom and outsourced the search on their site.
Maybe but I still don’t understand the comparison here. Yahoo was primarily a search engine, Netflix is a media and entertainment tech company.
Did you type this while taking your morning dump?
Decent analysis OP, but I disagree until Reed Hastings is CEO. Yahoo didn’t have someone like him at the helm. He’ll figure somethin’ out. I wouldn’t declare them the “Next yahoo” just yet.
Did Yahoo have a sub par CEO?
Problem is that majority of Netflix content is crap
Agree with the other Google, this isn’t the right comparison. Yahoo started off as a way to organize the internet. “Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web" and was focused on search. Google had a better search, Yahoo stopped competing in search, which was the beginning of the end for them. Netflix has to produce content to compete with other services.
I watch a lot less Netflix and more Amazon prime and Disney. So yeah unless they reinvent they’ll be replaced within a decade
Netflix has to diversify from being just a content store to something more. Otherwise, there is not much moat for it to continue to be the market leader, when one looks at offerings of prime/apple plus/Disney plus/HBO Max. Its first mover advantage will be gone in another 2-3 years, with the pandemic having given all the laggards a tailwind as well.
I know many people in the comments are berating you for your post but I think you are making an astute observation here. Just in the last month alone, I interviewed several highly ranked ML folks from Netflix who told me they are looking to leave because Netflix has turned into a content production company and the upside of their tech investments is minimal now. I was quite surprised but it checks out.
OK GOOGLE