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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 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.
ummonk 8y ago
>I got sick of spending more time scrolling through uninspiring content looking for something to watch than actually watching enjoyable content. Yeah, that's been my experience with Netflix every time I've tried restarting a membership.

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.

ummonk 8y ago

>I got sick of spending more time scrolling through uninspiring content looking for something to watch than actually watching enjoyable content. Yeah, that's been my experience with Netflix every time I've tried restarting a membership.