Comment by keiferski
1 year ago
Netflix thought they could take on Hollywood and beat them at their own film game. But in the process they realized that it’s not actually a game worth winning, and more importantly, that YouTube and TikTok are their real competition, not Hollywood.
The future of most media is video-based, and I think Netflix probably understands this and is trying to get away from the historical model as movies you watch online and closer to the optimized video ecosystem of YouTube. The latter is more relevant in a world with video-playing devices everywhere.
> YouTube and TikTok are their real competition
Even in real-time... My wife will literally watch Facebook Reels on her phone while we sit on the couch at night to watch something on Netflix together.
Anyway, I was thinking about this too when the article talked about the data from Amazon showing that viewers preferred stuff from the 90s and 00s over their newly produced content: How are Netflix, Amazon, etc. doing with young adults? If the audience is all Millennials and Gen-X folks, because Gen-Z folks are exclusively watching short-form video instead, it would make sense that stuff from the 90s and 00s would be the most popular. Like I think this is a well-established phenomenon with music, where a person's lifelong preferences will be fixed on whatever they first heard during their high school or college years. I will absolutely pay for a streaming service that gives me access to all the movies and TV series from, say, 1990-2015 and never adds any new content.
> My wife will literally watch Facebook Reels on her phone while we sit on the couch at night to watch something on Netflix together.
HN spans this incredible gamut from “Turing-award winner chimes in on their field of expertise” to stuff like this that just puts you in awe how pozzed some people are.
I think that those of us who live in the HN bubble, who tend to be more intentional and minimalist about our technology choices, are often out of touch with 90+% of users. My wife is my daily reminder of, and window into, the technology world that most people live in.
> Netflix thought they could take on Hollywood and beat them at their own film game.
Inadvertently an Inglorious Basterds paraphrase?
_Brief him._
Can you please explain what this optimized video ecosystem of youtube is actually optimized for other than clickbait? Maybe it works for others but i fell into this for a while and now i look at it in disgust.
Clickbait is a part of it, sure. But there are also many other content types that I wouldn’t characterize that way: 3+ hour long video podcasts, ambient music channels, niche indie musicians, short entertaining videos like Mr. Beast, etc. YouTube is increasingly a huge tent that includes tons of different kinds of content.
My point was more that YouTube is increasingly designed for a world in which people have their devices everywhere and jump in and out of watching videos.
Netflix isn’t, because it is still using the “old” model of sitting down for 30-200 minutes to watch a movie.
I’m not saying that the film model is bad or somehow worth getting rid of - I love films myself - just that it’s probably not the future of video content for most people.
I can see this working for individuals but what about families? And although i dont feel thinking too much about netflixes business it raises the question if this would requre to adapt their model to an ad based model rather than subscription.
Anyhow- i see a gigantic problem coming towards us caused by rapidly decreasing attention capacities and this does not help.
10 replies →
Unfortunately all content is being optimized for increasingly brief attention spans and availability / focus.
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Youtube still has massive variety and quality of production. I've largely been able to avoid the clickbait-optimized videos by curating my subscriptions. I've found about a dozen creators who's content I regularly watch. Many of them create YouTube videos as secondary to some other hobby or profession. Most are trending towards the clickbait thumbnail, but few are actually changing their content in that direction.
YouTube is optimized for unattended children.