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I think the discussion misses the most important part: The goal of the Netflix prize wasn't to come up with the best algorithm - it was to make the Netflix bra

by BB212 5y ago

I think the discussion misses the most important part: The goal of the Netflix prize wasn't to come up with the best algorithm - it was to make the Netflix brand exciting and legitimate to engineers. At the time, Netflix wasn't super high-tech and I'm sure it was hard for them to get the top talent they needed. It seems silly in retrospect now, but I'm certain the reason this was approved was because they wanted the free advertising this would provide within graduate classes and academia in general.

Supermancho 5y ago
> At the time, Netflix wasn't super high-tech I will admit that it was interesting to see what algorithms were poised to be cutting edge in media recommendation. The result was rather disappointing to me. Netflix STILL isn't that exciting from anything but a compensation standpoint. The problems at netflix are about programming, while the technical challenges are droll at best.
- setr 5y ago
  IMO the recommendations are no good because they fundamentally take the wrong approach — rather than ask the user what they like, they try to guess what you like based on usage (which really doesn't correlate well — I watch a lot of garbage because I can’t find things I like, and I don’t have anything better to do.) And they don’t ask because users don’t provide useful answers. But users don’t provide useful answers, because rating things doesn’t do anyone any good. I’m of the belief that if you can make ratings useful (catalogue all movies, including not on Netflix; give useful ways to view/update your lists; have direct relationships to recommendations), you would have dramatically better recommendations for dramatically less effort/complexity. I don’t think you’ll ever get to “good” recommendations based on usage. The data is fundamentally garbage. Of course, the other side is that Netflix isn’t interested in recommending things I like; their goal is to recommend things I’ll put up with. They just need 1 show worth watching and subscribing for every now and then, and N shows to keep me mildly amused to stop me from dropping it between good ones
  - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
    Who's more likely to keep renewing their subscription? The person who uses Netflix to watch a ton of trash that they think is "just ok," or the person who merely watches 1 or 2 things per month that they actually enjoy? I'm certain Netflix ran the numbers, and determined that a high-usage customer is the most valuable.
    - makeitdouble 5y ago
      It's interesting how many corporations don't actually "run the numbers" on what we think are important issues. Basically, internal focus and what the rest of the world cares about are disjointed and corps are often blind to obvious aspects. This can be improved by strong internal diversity, but Netflix doesn't look like a bastion of that (yet?) On "just ok" vs stuff actually enjoyable, "just ok" is fine until there is no better competitor for attention (e.g. a new smartphone game takes over the world). If they get to fit on the "actually enjoyable" scale instead, there is a better chance for people to keep their subscription, sometimes even if they end not viewing anything that month for whatever reason.
      - bcrescimanno 5y ago
        Former Netflix employee (2010-2013) here and, if there's one thing Netflix does as well or better than anyone in the industry, it's running the numbers. In particular, in those days, we had two key metrics that were strongly correlated and we would attempt to drive up: Streaming hours and account retention. Higher usage was strongly correlated with account retention to the point that they were the core of nearly every experiment we did.
        makeitdouble 5y ago
        I think these are reasonable numbers to focus on, but other relevant variables could be just too hard to quantify or set as goals... For instance how Netflix's catalog is attractive to new users/markets can be checked in regular polls, but it would be way more difficult to follow with fine granularity, far less precise, and ultimately a harder to handle number than just retention or number of new accounts. This means Netflix could see decent growth on its numbers, good retention and a steady flow of new accounts created, while struggling to reach new markets where competitors are doing great. This is an extreme example, but Blackberry typically had very good user retention and users loved their devices. Looking only at these numbers, they were doing fine for a long time (which is nothing to sneeze at)
- hobofan 5y ago
  Yeah, I'm sure being responsible for 10% of the internet's traffic is trivial on a technical level, together with all the codec and video encoding engineering they are doing.
  - Supermancho 5y ago
    > I'm sure being responsible for 10% of the internet's traffic is trivial on a technical level > the codec and video encoding engineering they are doing I am confident that is not what the vast majority are working on. Those aren't constrained problems that a single developer would be responsible for. Making unrealistic statements, is more than a little disingenuous.
verst 5y ago
Source? It was my understanding that there was significant business value in improving the accuracy of personalized movie recommendations. Recall that this was at a time where the majority of the business was DVDs sent via mail. A poor choice of movie created significant risk to customer satisfaction and hence retention.
- d0lphin 5y ago
  It's a quote from the linked post
  - verst 5y ago
    My bad. I was tired when I skimmed the article and OP's comment wasn't quoted. Still, I find that statement very surprising.
kens 5y ago
> make the Netflix brand exciting and legitimate to engineers As a serious question, why do people include Netflix in the acronym FAANG, which I see on HN all the time? Is there something special about Netflix? Netflix is around the #14 tech company, so it's strange to see Netflix in there instead of Microsoft. Or is the use of FAANG divorced from its literal meaning?
- ffggvv 5y ago
  it was a originally just FANG with one A. and it was just partially coined because it’s a catchy term. it’s also pretty dated at this point. and if you took the N out it would not be appropriate
  - kuiper0x2 5y ago
    The N should be Nvidia
    - dralley 5y ago
      You'd need to add another "A" for AMD.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- derangedHorse 5y ago
  It's probably included because of the sky-high salaries they offer since FAANG is typically an acronym used to refer to top software companies to work for. From what I've heard from friends, Microsoft typically pays the least out of all the companies that make up the acronym and their technologies are also seen as less trendy than the other companies listed.
  - square_usual 5y ago
    That's why Microsoft isn't in the acronym!
  - 5y ago

by BB212 5y ago

Supermancho 5y ago

> At the time, Netflix wasn't super high-tech I will admit that it was interesting to see what algorithms were poised to be cutting edge in media recommendation. The result was rather disappointing to me. Netflix STILL isn't that exciting from anything but a compensation standpoint. The problems at netflix are about programming, while the technical challenges are droll at best.

setr 5y ago
IMO the recommendations are no good because they fundamentally take the wrong approach — rather than ask the user what they like, they try to guess what you like based on usage (which really doesn't correlate well — I watch a lot of garbage because I can’t find things I like, and I don’t have anything better to do.) And they don’t ask because users don’t provide useful answers. But users don’t provide useful answers, because rating things doesn’t do anyone any good. I’m of the belief that if you can make ratings useful (catalogue all movies, including not on Netflix; give useful ways to view/update your lists; have direct relationships to recommendations), you would have dramatically better recommendations for dramatically less effort/complexity. I don’t think you’ll ever get to “good” recommendations based on usage. The data is fundamentally garbage. Of course, the other side is that Netflix isn’t interested in recommending things I like; their goal is to recommend things I’ll put up with. They just need 1 show worth watching and subscribing for every now and then, and N shows to keep me mildly amused to stop me from dropping it between good ones
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
  Who's more likely to keep renewing their subscription? The person who uses Netflix to watch a ton of trash that they think is "just ok," or the person who merely watches 1 or 2 things per month that they actually enjoy? I'm certain Netflix ran the numbers, and determined that a high-usage customer is the most valuable.
  - makeitdouble 5y ago
    It's interesting how many corporations don't actually "run the numbers" on what we think are important issues. Basically, internal focus and what the rest of the world cares about are disjointed and corps are often blind to obvious aspects. This can be improved by strong internal diversity, but Netflix doesn't look like a bastion of that (yet?) On "just ok" vs stuff actually enjoyable, "just ok" is fine until there is no better competitor for attention (e.g. a new smartphone game takes over the world). If they get to fit on the "actually enjoyable" scale instead, there is a better chance for people to keep their subscription, sometimes even if they end not viewing anything that month for whatever reason.
    - bcrescimanno 5y ago
      Former Netflix employee (2010-2013) here and, if there's one thing Netflix does as well or better than anyone in the industry, it's running the numbers. In particular, in those days, we had two key metrics that were strongly correlated and we would attempt to drive up: Streaming hours and account retention. Higher usage was strongly correlated with account retention to the point that they were the core of nearly every experiment we did.
      - makeitdouble 5y ago
        I think these are reasonable numbers to focus on, but other relevant variables could be just too hard to quantify or set as goals... For instance how Netflix's catalog is attractive to new users/markets can be checked in regular polls, but it would be way more difficult to follow with fine granularity, far less precise, and ultimately a harder to handle number than just retention or number of new accounts. This means Netflix could see decent growth on its numbers, good retention and a steady flow of new accounts created, while struggling to reach new markets where competitors are doing great. This is an extreme example, but Blackberry typically had very good user retention and users loved their devices. Looking only at these numbers, they were doing fine for a long time (which is nothing to sneeze at)
hobofan 5y ago
Yeah, I'm sure being responsible for 10% of the internet's traffic is trivial on a technical level, together with all the codec and video encoding engineering they are doing.
- Supermancho 5y ago
  > I'm sure being responsible for 10% of the internet's traffic is trivial on a technical level > the codec and video encoding engineering they are doing I am confident that is not what the vast majority are working on. Those aren't constrained problems that a single developer would be responsible for. Making unrealistic statements, is more than a little disingenuous.

verst 5y ago

Source? It was my understanding that there was significant business value in improving the accuracy of personalized movie recommendations. Recall that this was at a time where the majority of the business was DVDs sent via mail. A poor choice of movie created significant risk to customer satisfaction and hence retention.

d0lphin 5y ago
It's a quote from the linked post
- verst 5y ago
  My bad. I was tired when I skimmed the article and OP's comment wasn't quoted. Still, I find that statement very surprising.

kens 5y ago

> make the Netflix brand exciting and legitimate to engineers As a serious question, why do people include Netflix in the acronym FAANG, which I see on HN all the time? Is there something special about Netflix? Netflix is around the #14 tech company, so it's strange to see Netflix in there instead of Microsoft. Or is the use of FAANG divorced from its literal meaning?

ffggvv 5y ago
it was a originally just FANG with one A. and it was just partially coined because it’s a catchy term. it’s also pretty dated at this point. and if you took the N out it would not be appropriate
- kuiper0x2 5y ago
  The N should be Nvidia
  - dralley 5y ago
    You'd need to add another "A" for AMD.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
derangedHorse 5y ago
It's probably included because of the sky-high salaries they offer since FAANG is typically an acronym used to refer to top software companies to work for. From what I've heard from friends, Microsoft typically pays the least out of all the companies that make up the acronym and their technologies are also seen as less trendy than the other companies listed.
- square_usual 5y ago
  That's why Microsoft isn't in the acronym!
- 5y ago