Kirk Pearson's Weblog

Kirk Pearson's Weblog

All | Distributed Computing | General | Science | Space

« Francis Crick, co-di... | Main | Public Invited to... »
20040802 Monday August 02, 2004

The Netflix paradox

Every time I visit the Netflix DVD rental site, to see whether a movie I have returned has been received, or to change the order of my rental queue, I invariably find another recommended movie (or two or five) that I want to add to my queue. I try to shorten my queue by watching movies more frequently, but the more movies I watch, the more I visit the website and the longer my queue grows. And if I don't visit the site, I get a movie or movies I'm not in the mood to watch and it takes me longer to get around to watching it, so my queue doesn't shrink. So, the more I try to reduce my movie queue, the longer it grows.

Netflix must have figured out early on that targeted movie recommendations is a good way to keep customers coming back. And Amazon.com figured out years ago that targeted book and other media recommendations is a good way to keep customers buying new books faster than they can read their old ones. It's no coincidence that my (and probably your) bookshelf increasingly contains more books that I'm going to read than books I have read.

Is this just a basic flaw of human nature: the more we have, the more we realize we don't have, and the more we want? It is just greed? Is the Internet accellerating our greed by giving us access to more information?

(2004-08-02 13:48:23.0) Permalink Comments [3]

Comments:

The difference is that Amazon makes money each time you order a book from them, while Netflix actually loses (OK, spends money) each time you order a movie. So, it's in Netflix' interest to minimize the number of times you turn over a movie. There was a "study" referenced on /. a while back where the investigator tried to determine whether his viewing habits would affect Netflix' behavior towards him. He created three accounts with different rates of consumption. The account that turned over movies the fastest often had wait times for popular movies, while the account that consumed the fewest movies could get those same popular movies without a wait. So, Netflix seems to have built a throttling mechanism into their delivery system.

Posted by Nils on August 02, 2004 at 02:11 PM PDT #

On a micro level, maybe. On a macro level, however, customers will drop the service if they're not using it, i.e. not viewing many movies. So there's a bell-shaped curve; on one end are people who don't watch many movies and on the other are people who watch a lot of movies. Either extreme is bad for business. By tweaking their system to favor one side or the other, they try to move this curve into alignment with optimal business conditions.

Posted by Greg Reimer on August 02, 2004 at 03:16 PM PDT #

GAMEZNFLIX.COM This rental by mail company just started recently. You get 6 movies or games out at a time for only $18.50. I'm getting a 4 day turnaround. Mail back on Monday, get more on Thursday or Friday. Check it out.

Posted by Keith on August 19, 2004 at 07:23 AM PDT #

Post a Comment:

Comments are closed for this entry.

Today's Page Hits: 4