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How is it a shame if nobody uses the reviews and they're basically useless? Sounds like they're just deleting an unmaintained and unused feature.

evfanknitram 8y ago
Maybe it's just me but my experience is that except for the actual streaming (after you started to watch a movie), the Netflix UI is super bad. It recommends movies which I hate, it shows series which have been on Netflix for years under "New on Netflix", it doesn't provide any usable sorting, the searching is crap and so on. I would put zero faith in a statement by Netflix saying that something is "useless". The actual streaming experience is super good but when it comes to everything else they seem clueless to me.
- derefr 8y ago
  I find it interesting that there isn't yet a sort of "streaming-service library discovery/manager" app that doesn't do any streaming of its own, but rather just offers a good discovery UI for the streaming services you connect it to, where clicking "watch" in the service deep-links to the individual content item in the respective streaming app. This has been done to death in other content areas (I think there are more emulated-game library browsers than there are emulators!) so why not for streaming services? Is it that the streaming services don't expose the deep-linking ability?
  - chatmasta 8y ago
    Sounds like a great idea. You should build it!
  - prades 8y ago
    This app already exists for Netflix (25 countries) and Hulu: https://www.coollector.com/#netflix https://www.coollector.com/#netflix
- Rapzid 8y ago
  I'm miss the old days of reviews and Genre grouping on the home page. I used to get great indie film recommendations and could occasionally go "dumpster diving" for lower rated movies and find some gems. Honestly, I think Netflix has become full of themselves. They pretend to have discovered some universal truths in how to create the best UI experience and suggestion system, and yet they have A/B tested tge interface over the years to this pile of garbage. It even hangs Edge frequently when I first open it there; the only browser that will play 1080p for me! Give me a break Netflix; you're drunk on data.
h4b4n3r0 8y ago
I used the reviews. Sometimes a movie would be polarizing and I’d read the good ones and the bad ones to see if I’d like it myself. It’s not a hugely valuable feature (I can do the same on eg Rotten Tomatoes), but it wasn’t unused.
- parent5446 8y ago
  Maybe you used it, but overall few people were using it. That's why they got rid of it.
  - mygo 8y ago
    Maybe few people were using it because they made it hard / impossible to use? 70% of Netflix's viewing happens on TV. You couldn't even access user reviews on tv. 15% of Netflix's viewing happens on smart phones and tablets. You couldn't even access user reviews on mobile. So 85% of Netflix's viewers (TV, phones, tablets) couldn't even access the reviews from their viewing-devices. You could only access reviews on desktop/laptop... Which accounts for only 15% of Netflix's viewers.
    - ghaff 8y ago
      I can believe that's all true. So people now primarily consume the content through interfaces that inherently would make it difficult to interact with reviews. (And I suspect if they did pop up a box asking you to add a review after you watched something that would really annoy everyone.) In a lot of ways, the user reviews are mostly a vestige of when people used them while adding DVDs to their queue.
      - mygo 8y ago
        They didn’t have it in the UI. There is nothing inherently difficult about browsing reviews on a mobile device. Millions do it every time they’re about to download an app. There is no option to read reviews given to effectively 85% of their viewers. That was their design decision. And now they’re citing review usage numbers when their design decisions promoted low review usage numbers. They’re providing a circular argument which implies that it is not the main reason.
j88439h84 8y ago
"Declining use" is a result of Netflix's own decisions to downplay reviews because they were helping people decide not to watch movies they wouldn't like.
- Reason077 8y ago
  Why should Netflix care if you watch or don’t watch a given movie? What they should care about is whether you stay a subscriber or not. If they try to push too much garbage, and not provide good tools to filter out the crappy content, they’re just wasting people’s time. Users will get frustrated and leave. I did!
  - burfog 8y ago
    You'd think, but the people running Netflix are human. They do not always put business success first. There have been a number of highly political things produced by Netflix that were heavily promoted. People slammed them hard in the reviews and comments.
  - j88439h84 8y ago
    If the ratings show you that there aren't any shows you'll like, then you won't watch them. If you don't watch any shows, might as well unsubscribe.
smnrchrds 8y ago
> How is it a shame if nobody uses the reviews I am not a Netflix user, so this is just a guess, not an analysis. But could it be because user reviews used to be featured more prominently, but they were de-emphasized into oblivion over multiple years and UI updates? I know a news organization I visit frequently did this to their comment section. After their last UI design, they might as well have been put them the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'.

evfanknitram 8y ago

Maybe it's just me but my experience is that except for the actual streaming (after you started to watch a movie), the Netflix UI is super bad. It recommends movies which I hate, it shows series which have been on Netflix for years under "New on Netflix", it doesn't provide any usable sorting, the searching is crap and so on. I would put zero faith in a statement by Netflix saying that something is "useless". The actual streaming experience is super good but when it comes to everything else they seem clueless to me.

derefr 8y ago
I find it interesting that there isn't yet a sort of "streaming-service library discovery/manager" app that doesn't do any streaming of its own, but rather just offers a good discovery UI for the streaming services you connect it to, where clicking "watch" in the service deep-links to the individual content item in the respective streaming app. This has been done to death in other content areas (I think there are more emulated-game library browsers than there are emulators!) so why not for streaming services? Is it that the streaming services don't expose the deep-linking ability?
- chatmasta 8y ago
  Sounds like a great idea. You should build it!
- prades 8y ago
  This app already exists for Netflix (25 countries) and Hulu: https://www.coollector.com/#netflix https://www.coollector.com/#netflix
Rapzid 8y ago
I'm miss the old days of reviews and Genre grouping on the home page. I used to get great indie film recommendations and could occasionally go "dumpster diving" for lower rated movies and find some gems. Honestly, I think Netflix has become full of themselves. They pretend to have discovered some universal truths in how to create the best UI experience and suggestion system, and yet they have A/B tested tge interface over the years to this pile of garbage. It even hangs Edge frequently when I first open it there; the only browser that will play 1080p for me! Give me a break Netflix; you're drunk on data.

h4b4n3r0 8y ago

I used the reviews. Sometimes a movie would be polarizing and I’d read the good ones and the bad ones to see if I’d like it myself. It’s not a hugely valuable feature (I can do the same on eg Rotten Tomatoes), but it wasn’t unused.

parent5446 8y ago
Maybe you used it, but overall few people were using it. That's why they got rid of it.
- mygo 8y ago
  Maybe few people were using it because they made it hard / impossible to use? 70% of Netflix's viewing happens on TV. You couldn't even access user reviews on tv. 15% of Netflix's viewing happens on smart phones and tablets. You couldn't even access user reviews on mobile. So 85% of Netflix's viewers (TV, phones, tablets) couldn't even access the reviews from their viewing-devices. You could only access reviews on desktop/laptop... Which accounts for only 15% of Netflix's viewers.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    I can believe that's all true. So people now primarily consume the content through interfaces that inherently would make it difficult to interact with reviews. (And I suspect if they did pop up a box asking you to add a review after you watched something that would really annoy everyone.) In a lot of ways, the user reviews are mostly a vestige of when people used them while adding DVDs to their queue.
    - mygo 8y ago
      They didn’t have it in the UI. There is nothing inherently difficult about browsing reviews on a mobile device. Millions do it every time they’re about to download an app. There is no option to read reviews given to effectively 85% of their viewers. That was their design decision. And now they’re citing review usage numbers when their design decisions promoted low review usage numbers. They’re providing a circular argument which implies that it is not the main reason.

j88439h84 8y ago

"Declining use" is a result of Netflix's own decisions to downplay reviews because they were helping people decide not to watch movies they wouldn't like.

Reason077 8y ago
Why should Netflix care if you watch or don’t watch a given movie? What they should care about is whether you stay a subscriber or not. If they try to push too much garbage, and not provide good tools to filter out the crappy content, they’re just wasting people’s time. Users will get frustrated and leave. I did!
- burfog 8y ago
  You'd think, but the people running Netflix are human. They do not always put business success first. There have been a number of highly political things produced by Netflix that were heavily promoted. People slammed them hard in the reviews and comments.
- j88439h84 8y ago
  If the ratings show you that there aren't any shows you'll like, then you won't watch them. If you don't watch any shows, might as well unsubscribe.

smnrchrds 8y ago

> How is it a shame if nobody uses the reviews I am not a Netflix user, so this is just a guess, not an analysis. But could it be because user reviews used to be featured more prominently, but they were de-emphasized into oblivion over multiple years and UI updates? I know a news organization I visit frequently did this to their comment section. After their last UI design, they might as well have been put them the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'.