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"Netflix is so confident in its position it is effectively stating that if customers choose to watch TV, they will choose Netflix." That is, until they stop ch

"Netflix is so confident in its position it is effectively stating that if customers choose to watch TV, they will choose Netflix." That is, until they stop choosing Netflixt. I cancelled my Netflix account a week ago after finally realizing what a huge time suck it has become in my life. I know I'm just one data point but I'm pretty sure others will come to that conclusion eventually.

matwood 8y ago
So you stopped watching television style entertainment? That’s a great change if so, but I’m not sure I see that happening on a wide spread basis anytime soon.
- general8bitso 8y ago
  It is an anecdote, not a generalization.
notatoad 8y ago
>I'm pretty sure others will come to that conclusion eventually people come to that conclusion all the time. It's not new, and not something unique to Netflix. I don't see any reason why people would stop watching Netflix at higher rates than they have stopped watching any other TV format in the past 50 years. People like watching TV.
p33p 8y ago
I imagine you could say that about most things you spend your time on. Reading books? Huge time suck. Playing games? Huge time suck. Watching videos? Huge time suck. I think Ben explained it well in his podcast related to this. When people have $200 a month budgeted for entertainment, the marginal cost of a Netflix subscription isn't that much especially given the amount of potential content the service can have. Ultimately it depends on what you want to spend your time on, but I'd argue most want some form of entertainment, and Netflix fills that role for a lot of people.
- wutbrodo 8y ago
  The expression "Time suck" doesn't just mean "takes a lot of time", or people would be complaining that eating is a time suck. It has a connotation of wasted or unproductive time (where "productivity" is defined personally, as loosely as you like). A useful analogy might be junk food: 600 calories of potato chips has exactly as many calories as 600 calories of a balanced steak dinner, but the former is less filling and nutritious. It's reasonable to describe a service full of perceived low quality content as a time suck in ways that one might not consider watching better content.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    > A useful analogy might be junk food: 600 calories of potato chips has exactly as many calories as 600 calories of a balanced steak dinner, but the former is less filling and nutritious. The former also takes two orders of magnitude less space, time to prepare, time to eat and time to clean. :). Also tastes better. Personally, I interpret "time suck" as something that sucks time in, i.e. you may have "allocated" X hours for entertainment this week (but who truly allocates this?), but with Netflix, you find yourself spending 2 * X this week, an increase from 1.5 * X the last week.
    - V-2 8y ago
      > Also tastes better. Seriously? I'd take a good steak over potato chips every single time.
    - wutbrodo 8y ago
      > The former also takes two orders of magnitude less space, time to prepare, time to eat and time to clean. :). Also tastes better. Well sure, and throwing on Netflix take less time and mental energy than playing music, reading something challenging, working out, or any of a million other things that most people would personally say is a more productive use of leisure time. This seems in accordance with my metaphor. I think you may have assumed an indictment of eating junk food from my comment, while there was none. I eat it myself occasionally without any (or at least many) qualms. But it's something that you'd ideally minimize, in the same way that one would for things considered a time suck. > Personally, I interpret "time suck" as something that sucks time in, i.e. you may have "allocated" X hours for entertainment this week (but who truly allocates this?), but with Netflix, you find yourself spending 2 * X this week, an increase from 1.5 * X the last week. Hm, I get where you're coming from, but I don't think I'd exclude something that takes a constant, large amount of time from the category. I also am not sure I'd include things that I find fulfilling, like working out or reading, even if their time commitments surprised me upwards. (fwiw, junk food only tastes better if you're used to it: I find healthy food way, way more palatable, with the only exception being when I'm drunk or high).
mattnewport 8y ago
I was an early Netflix adopter and evangelist to family and friends. I canceled my account months ago last time they had a price increase and haven't missed it. I got sick of spending more time scrolling through uninspiring content looking for something to watch than actually watching enjoyable content. I see a flaw in a lot of subscription models in that they lead to companies optimizing for "engagement" rather than maximizing the value of my time as a consumer. In theory this seems like it shouldn't be fundamental to a subscription model in that Netflix's costs could be lower if they offered me less but higher quality content but in practice it doesn't seem to work out that way. Netflix might be right that if people choose to watch TV they'll choose Netflix. I chose not to watch TV any more rather than switching to another provider.
- maksimum 8y ago
  > I see a flaw in a lot of subscription models in that they lead to companies optimizing for "engagement" rather than maximizing the value of my time as a consumer This is really interesting. I suppose the question is how do you measure value delivered? Typically people show that they value something by paying for it. Normally you pay for goods with money, but many subscription services and F2P games are happy for you to pay with time. I feel like using "time paid" is a valid proxy for how much value customers get from the service. What doesn't make sense to me is why it appears that so many people value their (free) time so lowly. Perhaps if Netflix offered a second PPV service its recommendation engine would have different incentives. With that model you also have payment friction and discovery friction. But honestly I'm not sure why they don't do it -- Amazon has been for a while.
  - wutbrodo 8y ago
    User ratings? It's not a great dataset though.
  - mattnewport 8y ago
    It seems like there's something misleading going on with the paying with time trend. Companies can increase "engagement" for a while by making their experiences waste more of their users' time. There's a frog boiling effect where people don't really notice incremental changes but one day suddenly realize the service doesn't seem like a good use of their time any more and they ditch it completely. This has happened to me with Netflix, Facebook and Instagram and while it's not super common yet there does seem to be a bit of a trend of early adopter types ditching these services. From the company's point of view this might look like a positive trend in engagement followed by a sudden hard to explain complete drop off.

matwood 8y ago

So you stopped watching television style entertainment? That’s a great change if so, but I’m not sure I see that happening on a wide spread basis anytime soon.

general8bitso 8y ago
It is an anecdote, not a generalization.

notatoad 8y ago

>I'm pretty sure others will come to that conclusion eventually people come to that conclusion all the time. It's not new, and not something unique to Netflix. I don't see any reason why people would stop watching Netflix at higher rates than they have stopped watching any other TV format in the past 50 years. People like watching TV.

p33p 8y ago

I imagine you could say that about most things you spend your time on. Reading books? Huge time suck. Playing games? Huge time suck. Watching videos? Huge time suck. I think Ben explained it well in his podcast related to this. When people have $200 a month budgeted for entertainment, the marginal cost of a Netflix subscription isn't that much especially given the amount of potential content the service can have. Ultimately it depends on what you want to spend your time on, but I'd argue most want some form of entertainment, and Netflix fills that role for a lot of people.

wutbrodo 8y ago
The expression "Time suck" doesn't just mean "takes a lot of time", or people would be complaining that eating is a time suck. It has a connotation of wasted or unproductive time (where "productivity" is defined personally, as loosely as you like). A useful analogy might be junk food: 600 calories of potato chips has exactly as many calories as 600 calories of a balanced steak dinner, but the former is less filling and nutritious. It's reasonable to describe a service full of perceived low quality content as a time suck in ways that one might not consider watching better content.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  > A useful analogy might be junk food: 600 calories of potato chips has exactly as many calories as 600 calories of a balanced steak dinner, but the former is less filling and nutritious. The former also takes two orders of magnitude less space, time to prepare, time to eat and time to clean. :). Also tastes better. Personally, I interpret "time suck" as something that sucks time in, i.e. you may have "allocated" X hours for entertainment this week (but who truly allocates this?), but with Netflix, you find yourself spending 2 * X this week, an increase from 1.5 * X the last week.
  - V-2 8y ago
    > Also tastes better. Seriously? I'd take a good steak over potato chips every single time.
  - wutbrodo 8y ago
    > The former also takes two orders of magnitude less space, time to prepare, time to eat and time to clean. :). Also tastes better. Well sure, and throwing on Netflix take less time and mental energy than playing music, reading something challenging, working out, or any of a million other things that most people would personally say is a more productive use of leisure time. This seems in accordance with my metaphor. I think you may have assumed an indictment of eating junk food from my comment, while there was none. I eat it myself occasionally without any (or at least many) qualms. But it's something that you'd ideally minimize, in the same way that one would for things considered a time suck. > Personally, I interpret "time suck" as something that sucks time in, i.e. you may have "allocated" X hours for entertainment this week (but who truly allocates this?), but with Netflix, you find yourself spending 2 * X this week, an increase from 1.5 * X the last week. Hm, I get where you're coming from, but I don't think I'd exclude something that takes a constant, large amount of time from the category. I also am not sure I'd include things that I find fulfilling, like working out or reading, even if their time commitments surprised me upwards. (fwiw, junk food only tastes better if you're used to it: I find healthy food way, way more palatable, with the only exception being when I'm drunk or high).

mattnewport 8y ago

I was an early Netflix adopter and evangelist to family and friends. I canceled my account months ago last time they had a price increase and haven't missed it. I got sick of spending more time scrolling through uninspiring content looking for something to watch than actually watching enjoyable content. I see a flaw in a lot of subscription models in that they lead to companies optimizing for "engagement" rather than maximizing the value of my time as a consumer. In theory this seems like it shouldn't be fundamental to a subscription model in that Netflix's costs could be lower if they offered me less but higher quality content but in practice it doesn't seem to work out that way. Netflix might be right that if people choose to watch TV they'll choose Netflix. I chose not to watch TV any more rather than switching to another provider.

maksimum 8y ago
> I see a flaw in a lot of subscription models in that they lead to companies optimizing for "engagement" rather than maximizing the value of my time as a consumer This is really interesting. I suppose the question is how do you measure value delivered? Typically people show that they value something by paying for it. Normally you pay for goods with money, but many subscription services and F2P games are happy for you to pay with time. I feel like using "time paid" is a valid proxy for how much value customers get from the service. What doesn't make sense to me is why it appears that so many people value their (free) time so lowly. Perhaps if Netflix offered a second PPV service its recommendation engine would have different incentives. With that model you also have payment friction and discovery friction. But honestly I'm not sure why they don't do it -- Amazon has been for a while.
- wutbrodo 8y ago
  User ratings? It's not a great dataset though.
- mattnewport 8y ago
  It seems like there's something misleading going on with the paying with time trend. Companies can increase "engagement" for a while by making their experiences waste more of their users' time. There's a frog boiling effect where people don't really notice incremental changes but one day suddenly realize the service doesn't seem like a good use of their time any more and they ditch it completely. This has happened to me with Netflix, Facebook and Instagram and while it's not super common yet there does seem to be a bit of a trend of early adopter types ditching these services. From the company's point of view this might look like a positive trend in engagement followed by a sudden hard to explain complete drop off.