I signed up for Netflix around the time I got my first DVD player in the late 90s. I watched a lot of cool movies I would never have otherwise had access to. It was fun to discover indie and foreign cinema that were not available in my local video rental stores.
When they released streaming it was truly awesome. Not only was the seleciton great, they also had things like the concept of "friends" and you could let your friends see what you watched. The joy of discovering new movies could have gone the way of something like letterboxd except where you can actually see the movies. The Netflix challenge was cool too because it really seemed like they wanted to get you to find the perfect movie for _you_.
But when the studios started to wise up and pull their content they chose the most user-hostile and pessimistic ways of dealing with it. Netflix used to be more than just a content pipe, they added value the form of the recommendation engine and were starting to add value in a social network of sorts. But instead they chose deception to hide the fact that their library was getting hollowed out. They killed off the budding social-media aspect.
I guess content is the foundation upon which you build all of these things and when their content got yanked they had to focus on maximizing viewer experience within those limitations. But a part of me does wonder if I could find something I really like within the huge library of unknown garbage they have. The problem is that they don't seem to care about that kind of experience anymore. So that's why I am no longer a subscriber.
When they released streaming it was truly awesome. Not only was the seleciton great, they also had things like the concept of "friends" and you could let your friends see what you watched. The joy of discovering new movies could have gone the way of something like letterboxd except where you can actually see the movies. The Netflix challenge was cool too because it really seemed like they wanted to get you to find the perfect movie for _you_.
But when the studios started to wise up and pull their content they chose the most user-hostile and pessimistic ways of dealing with it. Netflix used to be more than just a content pipe, they added value the form of the recommendation engine and were starting to add value in a social network of sorts. But instead they chose deception to hide the fact that their library was getting hollowed out. They killed off the budding social-media aspect.
I guess content is the foundation upon which you build all of these things and when their content got yanked they had to focus on maximizing viewer experience within those limitations. But a part of me does wonder if I could find something I really like within the huge library of unknown garbage they have. The problem is that they don't seem to care about that kind of experience anymore. So that's why I am no longer a subscriber.