Netflix stock dip stirred conversations in Blind. Made me think of another aspect: Netflix has started turning into cable of streaming services (being legacy). Pulling the whole ecosystem down. Every other streaming platform integrates & provides APIs for user recommendations. Netflix somehow thinks this is a bad idea. You can buy a chromecast tv, roku or apple tv.. it officially cannot do user recommendations for netflix originals. So, users have to go into netflix to figure it out. Why? When apple, the usual strickler for monopolizing is happy to provide this support, why can’t netflix. In my case; I use chromecast tv and google can’t recommend or even take ratings for netflix shows to provide future recommendations.. you cant even add netflix originals to a common shared watchlist. I usually keep a common watchlist and love googles recommendations and this pisses me off. Edit: More recent article - https://www.techhive.com/article/579029/netflix-drags-streaming-tv-backward-cord-cutters-take-note.html
This article is from an year ago.
Netflix is the leading streaming service and it has the best recommendation algorithms. So it has the most to gain by keeping users in Netflix app. Smaller services have discovery problem so they don't mind being one of many on device provider's list.
The biggest annoyance when it comes to streaming is hopping between apps to find content and not being able to have a consistent experience with search, recommendation, watchlist, likes/dislikes.. netflix preventing this is not good for a consumer except themselves. I think google would do a much better recommendation given years of tuning their recommendation engines with Youtube/Search. My recommendations on chromecast tv are SPOT ON and it used to have netflix show recommendations but it stopped.
I don't think Google does better recommendation but that's beside the point. Netflix is much stronger than Google in this industry. Netflix can afford to not be on Google TV. Google can't. So Netflix can dictate terms.
Fire stick does it (Netflix recommendations). Not sure how
So, google can still recommend licensed movie and tv content from netflix (like non-netflix produced but available through netflix) but it cant use any netflix original, nor can it support ratings for these.
It's probably just a stage in market growth - Netflix was the first mover, and is still the largest, so it's trying to protect this position by limiting what other platforms can do. Once their position is less dominant they will open up to play on the same field as everyone else. And google will once again win the recommendation war :)
The amount of missed opportunity with netflix and streaming appalls me. They could have just built what Google did with the chromecast tv and generalized cross platform recommendation. They could have done live streaming like hulu did and a lot more. Netflix had/has the best engineers and I would say really bad or narrow vision as a product. It could have been google of streaming but it’s becoming Yahoo 😅
Seems like they missed the moment when they stopped being the only kid on the block to being just one of many. Still, the space is incredibly fragmented now, and there's a ton of space for centralization. Netflix still has the best tech, so not all is lost, but then if the stocks drop even more there's a total chance that they'll be acquired.
Imagine watching Netflix originals
Well why doesn’t Apple build Safari for Windows and linux? Apple, Google, and Netflix are the same and they will base their decisions on money. Netflix probably wants their users to check out their apps so that the users are living in Netflix universe where Netflix controls and dont have to rely on other parties.
Same reason why iMessage exists. Nothing to gain for Apple to join RCS.
Netflix doesn’t keep you from deep linking or recommending their content. But you’re very much on your own. They experimented with providing a third party search API a few years ago, but apparently decided not to go there. As far as I know TiVo is the only company that still gets a catalog from them. Everyone else scrapes. The reason is simple. They know that once you’re there, you’re likely to stay there. So why make it easy to search with competing products? But that may change with all the competition. Hard to say, the market is such a horrendous mess.
Was wondering how JustWatch does it if people are saying there's no API. Scraping is very scrappy (no pun intended) but it looks like it's the way to go. I'm assuming it's the same for most other platforms like Prime Video, etc.
Hulu definitely has content catalog APIs available for device partners, I knew a few people who worked on those.
Netflix isn’t trying to add users in the USA, they know they’ve plateaued in this market. All of their effort is going from 200m+ subscribers to 1b+ subscribers, and they believe they’re primarily going to get that growth from international users via international content + cornerstone content. Any additional platforms they support will predominately be based on whether or not international users depended on them.
Just what I heard on ET podcast on KCRW, as of recently!
Yes Reed please acquire us
Lol... Why would Netflix or anyone for that matter acquire a company that manufacturers a cheap plastic box with an embedded media player in it ? I say $100M is a fair valuation for Roku.
Know your company’s history. Roku almost went down before they reinvented themselves as the Netflix Box company. Netflix outsourced their streamer box so to not compete directly against Apple. I still have the origins Roku audio stream they were originally known for. Anthony Wood actually left Roku to work at Netflix for a while when the box came into fruition.