I don’t actually have any inside information; I may be talking out of my ass here. Also, before I continue I would like to point out that I have been a Netflix member for years now, and I find the service to be immeasurably good and valuable.
What I’m seeing, however, is that the service is quietly eking out of its Community features. It used to be, not so long ago, that there was a tab or two at the top of the page for “Community,” or “Friends” — this is now no longer, instead requiring users to look at the bottom navigation. In the past few days, too, Netflix has rolled out some changes to their movie pages. Now, there is not even any tabs or any way whatsoever to access your friends ratings of a particular movie.
It’s rather clear that Netflix faces some stiff competition. Walmart has recently bought out Vudu, a streaming service which delivers high definition movie rentals; Apple is now attempting to lower the cost of TV shows via iTunes; and Hulu is supposed to go towards a pay model in the near future.
Moreover, the number of Netflix users has been growing rather considerably, as you can tell from their reports. I can’t imagine that’s having anything but a negative impact on their server load. With more than 12 million users each with a number of ratings (I’ve personally rated more than 800 movies in my Netflix account), that’s potentially a Shit-Ton of information. Indeed, ratings hold a central part to the health of the Netflix ecosystem, providing the basis for recommendations, and, thereby, customer retention.
My intuition is that in order to keep the friends features afloat at Netflix, they’re going to have to change the way that they store these user ratings in some way or another, or else general site performance will plummet. It would be interesting to know what exactly they’re using on the back end, and how it’s all structured.
Personally, I feel that while the recommendations are important, there is so much emphasis in the market right now on the social web that taking the Friends features out of their ecosystem could hurt them in the long run. I also really like to find what my friends think about a particular movie, much moreso than the random comments which are now on the updated movie page. A third-party system may be feasible, though I also feel that they need to incorporate these features in their own servers and systems; perhaps a Netflix-owned and operated community.netflix.com sub-site which is otherwise independent of ratings, and which takes community data ordered in a more application-optimized way. It’s their move at this point, and I hope they find some solid solutions which move in this more social direction.
I think the random reviews were always on every movie page. It’s just that the friend’s ratings are not featured anymore. The random reviews also used to be further down the page more towards the bottom. When you clicked on a film, it would have your friends star ratings and then a few quotes by critics or journalists related to the film, then the random other customer reviews. You would have had to actually scroll way down the page to see the random reviews, whereas now you see them as soon as you open the page (both the friends ratings and critics comments are gone). The only feature that I actually like is that there is a new little box on the right hand side that lets you know, if you have the film in your Q, what position it is located at. That’s kinnda nice, cause you can evaluate whether you want to move it up or not. But it is most definitely not worth taking the friends ratings away. Not only do they influence my renting decisions, but they also help keep me up to date on what my family and friends have/have not seen, which is part of what is so nice about the friends feature, it makes me feel more connected to my family cause I am more aware of what they are doing. Since movies are one of my primary joys, Netflix has functioned for me as a “social site” that i spend a lot of time on. Now there is no friend stuff represented anywhere unless you go to the friend page. It’s sad.
I’m sure I will still spend lots of time on netflix though. It’s the place on the internet I go the most, only rivaled by my e-mail accounts.
the Friends’ ratings was my favorite feature of Netflix – I loved seeing what my friends and relatives rated a film, and we coudl then send notes back and forth, argue/knitpick, and make reccomendations adding a whole wonderful conversational dimension to the site. Very very sad that it’s gone now. Feels all cold.