4 ms·

Hm. Feels like a whole lot of companies are jumping on the Netflix bandwagon with original content. And here's the thing that concerns me: Netflix, on a tech

Hm. Feels like a whole lot of companies are jumping on the Netflix bandwagon with original content. And here's the thing that concerns me: Netflix, on a tech level, is pretty much a solved problem. There's stuff left to be done for sure, rust never sleeps, but they're pretty much good to go tech-wise. The content side of their business is an existential struggle, and getting original content right is IMHO a do-or-die proposition for them. They did a pretty damned good job because they have to. All these other guys, they see Netflix doing a really good job on original content, and they want to duplicate the success. Which is understandable, but can they devote the focus at the top level that is necessary to do the job? Or are they going to half-ass it with the expectation that running a content studio is something any idiot liberal arts major can do? Snapchat, for me, isn't in the TV game and shouldn't be. Nor Apple. And the results of their experiments are about what I'd expect out of a couple of big companies messing around with original content.

IanCal 9y ago
Tech wise I don't know. I used to think so but on my main device (shield TV) I cannot reliably watch it any more. They have been largely unhelpful in getting it working and seem to refuse to roll back the software to a working version. The latest shield update even removes my previous ability to pin the working version. They no longer, to me, have a working streaming service.
igk 9y ago
>..., rust never sleeps,... I am not familiar with this phrase, what does it refer to? Or are you referring to my current favorite programming language and the need for it to go mainstream? ;-) You can also have another perspective on this: with the lack of investments in moonshots and every less actual work to do, we are now entering the "entertainment industry" phase of our society. You could argue that Netflix creates the on-demand-video equivalent of long form writing, youtube spans from that to shlock novels and comic books...so with vine gone (it's still gone right?), maybe snapchat or instagram will fill the video equivalent of tabloids spanning to facebook posts.
- komali2 9y ago
  cough hello rust evangelism strike force cough Rust never sleeps: the idea that nothing is ever "not needing maintenance." In webdev, this means that even if Netflix is "perfect," it may not remain so if, for example, the Chrome, Firefox, and Microsoft teams all find critical exploits in their browser code that forces a push to up to date and legacy versions of their browsers that breaks the netflix video viewer, or whatever. No matter how well you paint a bridge, the rust will find a way in.
  - igk 9y ago
    > cough hello rust evangelism strike force cough we also never sleep ;-) thanks for the explanation...it will be interesting how netflix will handle it. The "reasonable thing" to do would be to either a) plonk all of those "superfluous" engineers into creative fun mode ala xerox park or b) set them onto formally verifying the stack and then sack them slowly/stop hiring, at least as far as can guess from the outside of the entertainment industry? Though handling 3D/VR+developing teldedildonics (does netflix do adult content?) might give the techies continued legitimacy
    - komali2 9y ago
      I don't know, but I am definitely stealing teledildonics from you.
- Jach 9y ago
  The phrase is old and refers to needing constant maintenance on anything (because rust and decay never stop), but it was probably most popularized by the Rust Never Sleeps album. Its closing/opening tracks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hey_Hey,_My_My_(Into_the_Black) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hey_Hey,_My_My_(Into_the_Black...
- warcher 9y ago
  haha, literal rust. Everything is decaying, all the time. Entropy never sleeps, to paraphrase.
mpg33 9y ago
Same thing when Microsoft launched Xbox One in 2013. They talked about TV content that they would be investing in. I was just thinking...why are you getting involved in making TV shows?..you and Sony effectively have a duopoly on the console AAA games market...it's a gaming machine, if anything you should be investing in gaming content.
- satsuma 9y ago
  And it bit them in the ass when Sony pushed games, games, and more games onto the PS4 and have enjoyed being on the winning side of a healthy install base gap ever since.
  - jonnathanson 9y ago
    It's easy to knock them in retrospect, but around the time MSFT was making the decision to produce original shows, the Xbox platform was accounting for a healthy proportion of total Netflix watch time. MSFT believed that this was a key differentiating factor, and that it presented Xbox the oppprtunity it needed to win the war for the living room as a total entertainment console. In hindsight, we see how that decision looks naive. Xbox was always about the games, and the Netflix consumption was incidental. But original programming wasn't a completely stupid idea on its face back in ~2008-10, or whenever it was. In fact, it's possible they could have succeeded; they just never seemed to be able to get the studio off the ground.
- onion2k 9y ago
  Microsoft have a huge amount of data about exactly what Xbox users do. You might think it's all about gaming but they know that's not the case.
  - izacus 9y ago
    Except that Xbox isn't doing that well in comparison to PS4 because it's a significantly inferior gaming machine. This years Xbox announcements were thus only about the games.
biztos 9y ago
The story from Netflix seems to be that there is still enormous room to expand in the content side and in fact their business model is to make even more room, by having more niche programming as well as the binge-watching thing. Also it was interesting to hear Reed Hastings basically say that as a tech company Netflix might not have too long an independent life but if you look at it as a rival to Disney it could be a hugely successful independent company basically forever -- and that he himself likes that idea. IIRC that was in an A16Z interview but I'm not sure. Anecdotally: I don't watch "regular TV" but I do subscribe to Netflix, and I buy a lot of shows on my Apple TV (quality and reliability beat cost, for me). I recently subscribed to ShowTime just to watch the new Twin Peaks; maybe I'll stay after that, maybe not. I've thought about ditching my Netflix account because where I am it's sloooow, but every so often they have some awesome original content I can't find elsewhere, and I stay. I'm sure I overspend, but I probably spend $100/mo on "stuff on TV." I'm sure a lot of other people do too. And my commitment to spending it on one thing versus another is really minimal. I don't know if Snapchat will be good at the TV game, but I do know that just like Valley companies tend to "get" software more than LA companies do, the opposite is true of entertainment; and Snapchat has shown they have at least some clue what "the kids" want, which is a pretty huge deal. If I were a media exec I would definitely want some kind of deal with Snapchat, if only to hedge my bets against the (to me, as a grownup) unknown.
- warcher 9y ago
  What would somebody from NBC be looking to get out of Snapchat? I admit fully that I'm too old for Snapchat-- I don't want my stuff to disappear, I don't do anything embarrassing and I forget enough crap already. Is it just eyeballs? Why does Snapchat want to host a TV show? Is it going to disappear? I grew up with the whole "must see TV" thing, where if you weren't in front of the TV when Seinfeld came on, then you weren't gonna see it. It fucking sucked, to be blunt. Who would want to go back to that? And if Snapchat is just putting tv shows into the app because disappearing snap whatevers aren't enough to drive whatever number they need to drive, what competitive advantage are they going to use to go after the many, many, many content players already in the mix? The whole thing just leaves me scratching my head.
SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
If they're poaching top tier YouTube talent then they might not have to worry about getting the content right because the market has more or less already selected for them. DeFranco mentioned that a top media company had made him an offer about a month ago.
Aron 9y ago
Astonishingly for a solved problem, Netflix still spends over 800M$ a year on research and development. I tend to scratch my head that they possibly get a good ROI on that. I think HBO's entire content budget is ~2B$ for comparison.

IanCal 9y ago

Tech wise I don't know. I used to think so but on my main device (shield TV) I cannot reliably watch it any more. They have been largely unhelpful in getting it working and seem to refuse to roll back the software to a working version. The latest shield update even removes my previous ability to pin the working version. They no longer, to me, have a working streaming service.

igk 9y ago

>..., rust never sleeps,... I am not familiar with this phrase, what does it refer to? Or are you referring to my current favorite programming language and the need for it to go mainstream? ;-) You can also have another perspective on this: with the lack of investments in moonshots and every less actual work to do, we are now entering the "entertainment industry" phase of our society. You could argue that Netflix creates the on-demand-video equivalent of long form writing, youtube spans from that to shlock novels and comic books...so with vine gone (it's still gone right?), maybe snapchat or instagram will fill the video equivalent of tabloids spanning to facebook posts.

komali2 9y ago
cough hello rust evangelism strike force cough Rust never sleeps: the idea that nothing is ever "not needing maintenance." In webdev, this means that even if Netflix is "perfect," it may not remain so if, for example, the Chrome, Firefox, and Microsoft teams all find critical exploits in their browser code that forces a push to up to date and legacy versions of their browsers that breaks the netflix video viewer, or whatever. No matter how well you paint a bridge, the rust will find a way in.
- igk 9y ago
  > cough hello rust evangelism strike force cough we also never sleep ;-) thanks for the explanation...it will be interesting how netflix will handle it. The "reasonable thing" to do would be to either a) plonk all of those "superfluous" engineers into creative fun mode ala xerox park or b) set them onto formally verifying the stack and then sack them slowly/stop hiring, at least as far as can guess from the outside of the entertainment industry? Though handling 3D/VR+developing teldedildonics (does netflix do adult content?) might give the techies continued legitimacy
  - komali2 9y ago
    I don't know, but I am definitely stealing teledildonics from you.
Jach 9y ago
The phrase is old and refers to needing constant maintenance on anything (because rust and decay never stop), but it was probably most popularized by the Rust Never Sleeps album. Its closing/opening tracks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hey_Hey,_My_My_(Into_the_Black) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hey_Hey,_My_My_(Into_the_Black...
warcher 9y ago
haha, literal rust. Everything is decaying, all the time. Entropy never sleeps, to paraphrase.

mpg33 9y ago

Same thing when Microsoft launched Xbox One in 2013. They talked about TV content that they would be investing in. I was just thinking...why are you getting involved in making TV shows?..you and Sony effectively have a duopoly on the console AAA games market...it's a gaming machine, if anything you should be investing in gaming content.

satsuma 9y ago
And it bit them in the ass when Sony pushed games, games, and more games onto the PS4 and have enjoyed being on the winning side of a healthy install base gap ever since.
- jonnathanson 9y ago
  It's easy to knock them in retrospect, but around the time MSFT was making the decision to produce original shows, the Xbox platform was accounting for a healthy proportion of total Netflix watch time. MSFT believed that this was a key differentiating factor, and that it presented Xbox the oppprtunity it needed to win the war for the living room as a total entertainment console. In hindsight, we see how that decision looks naive. Xbox was always about the games, and the Netflix consumption was incidental. But original programming wasn't a completely stupid idea on its face back in ~2008-10, or whenever it was. In fact, it's possible they could have succeeded; they just never seemed to be able to get the studio off the ground.
onion2k 9y ago
Microsoft have a huge amount of data about exactly what Xbox users do. You might think it's all about gaming but they know that's not the case.
- izacus 9y ago
  Except that Xbox isn't doing that well in comparison to PS4 because it's a significantly inferior gaming machine. This years Xbox announcements were thus only about the games.

biztos 9y ago

The story from Netflix seems to be that there is still enormous room to expand in the content side and in fact their business model is to make even more room, by having more niche programming as well as the binge-watching thing. Also it was interesting to hear Reed Hastings basically say that as a tech company Netflix might not have too long an independent life but if you look at it as a rival to Disney it could be a hugely successful independent company basically forever -- and that he himself likes that idea. IIRC that was in an A16Z interview but I'm not sure. Anecdotally: I don't watch "regular TV" but I do subscribe to Netflix, and I buy a lot of shows on my Apple TV (quality and reliability beat cost, for me). I recently subscribed to ShowTime just to watch the new Twin Peaks; maybe I'll stay after that, maybe not. I've thought about ditching my Netflix account because where I am it's sloooow, but every so often they have some awesome original content I can't find elsewhere, and I stay. I'm sure I overspend, but I probably spend $100/mo on "stuff on TV." I'm sure a lot of other people do too. And my commitment to spending it on one thing versus another is really minimal. I don't know if Snapchat will be good at the TV game, but I do know that just like Valley companies tend to "get" software more than LA companies do, the opposite is true of entertainment; and Snapchat has shown they have at least some clue what "the kids" want, which is a pretty huge deal. If I were a media exec I would definitely want some kind of deal with Snapchat, if only to hedge my bets against the (to me, as a grownup) unknown.

warcher 9y ago
What would somebody from NBC be looking to get out of Snapchat? I admit fully that I'm too old for Snapchat-- I don't want my stuff to disappear, I don't do anything embarrassing and I forget enough crap already. Is it just eyeballs? Why does Snapchat want to host a TV show? Is it going to disappear? I grew up with the whole "must see TV" thing, where if you weren't in front of the TV when Seinfeld came on, then you weren't gonna see it. It fucking sucked, to be blunt. Who would want to go back to that? And if Snapchat is just putting tv shows into the app because disappearing snap whatevers aren't enough to drive whatever number they need to drive, what competitive advantage are they going to use to go after the many, many, many content players already in the mix? The whole thing just leaves me scratching my head.

SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago

If they're poaching top tier YouTube talent then they might not have to worry about getting the content right because the market has more or less already selected for them. DeFranco mentioned that a top media company had made him an offer about a month ago.

Aron 9y ago

Astonishingly for a solved problem, Netflix still spends over 800M$ a year on research and development. I tend to scratch my head that they possibly get a good ROI on that. I think HBO's entire content budget is ~2B$ for comparison.