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Netflix had a 10 year head start in the streaming space. They tried to take on entrenched Hollywood studios. They had some success (some Netflix originals are s

by pm90 4y ago

Netflix had a 10 year head start in the streaming space. They tried to take on entrenched Hollywood studios. They had some success (some Netflix originals are some of the best TV shows) but it looks like they couldn’t really match the content generation capacity of e.g. Disney. I think they are dead. Whats their competitive advantage? The tech is commoditized. Other streaming platforms really sucked at first but they’ve upped their game and now I don’t see much difference. What does Netflix offer that others don’t? The only thing atm is that they’re ad free. Once thats gone, its so over.

twobitshifter 4y ago
They switched from DVDs to streaming and then stalled. They should have diversified and kept going. Why doesn’t my Netflix include music and video games at this point? Who don’t I see live sports? Why am I not able to Netflix with someone in a video chat? Why don’t we have any crowdsourced content I can watch? Why isn’t Netflix used for virtual learning the world over?
- ipqk 4y ago
  They do have video games.
  - IIsi50MHz 4y ago
    …But who knows this? And who remembers (more than vaguely) those very few rare times Netflix promoted to them anything interactive or game-like?
- kumarvvr 4y ago
  Why it did not jump on the streaming bandwagon really boggles me. Such an easy, available target.
elliekelly 4y ago
IIRC there was an internal “competition”, of sorts, between the two head original content buyers at Netflix. One took the HBO approach: buy high quality content, even if it’s expensive. The other had a spray and pray strategy: buy up all the cheap crap and hope you get a few hits. Long story short the Spray & Pray exec got promoted and the other exec got squeezed out. But now that all of the major studios have started their own streaming services (and have started being stingier with their licensing) original content is perhaps the most important driver of new subscriptions and subscription maintenance for a streaming platform. And it seems Netflix bet the house on building their library out of cheap crap like Emily in Paris and God’s Favorite Idiot with the occasional expensive (but still crappy) Ryan Reynolds action movie sprinkled in to keep things “fresh”. Netflix made a huge mistake when they went with the spaghetti against the wall strategy and for some reason they just keep doubling down to make their already shitty strategy even worse.
- missedthecue 4y ago
  I don't think Netflix had a choice. Who is selling good content anymore? HBO? They run their own thing now. Paramount? They've got their own thing now. Disney? They've got their own thing now. MGM? They're streaming through Amazon Prime now. Netflix was forced into this position by competition, not by internal decisions.
  - thefounder 4y ago
    Netflix surely has a choice: to make quality movie series instead of the crap they push now. I'm the kind of person who used to watch the whole movie even if it was crap but netflix succeded in breaking this compulsive behaviour. It's just too much low quality content and the worst thing is that I can't even filter it out. Maybe there are few good movies but I'm not willing to watch all the crap just to find the very few diamonds in the mud/swamp. I think at some point people just give up and then avoid netflix like a plague. I still have a netflix subscription because it's shared with several family members but as soon as I get the OK from them I'm done with Netflix.
    - demadog 4y ago
      You’re not the 80%+ of consumers that eat up the cheap stuff and love it.
  - elliekelly 4y ago
    I’m talking about original content. Not licensed. Netflix can buy a new series pitch the exact same way HBO and Paramount and Amazon Prime can.
- mal-2 4y ago
  That makes a lot of sense. The other thing I felt as a viewer was that any time a good show managed to get made, it would get canceled after two seasons at most. It became so commonplace that I've seen memes about it. If you're going to do spaghetti against the wall strategy, why wouldn't you continue to support shows that actually stick?
vishnugupta 4y ago
> Whats their competitive advantage? The tech is commoditized. +1. Content will become even more important as the bandwidth keeps increasing (hello, 5G!). Netflix solved some hairy problems back when streaming was hard due to bandwidth and other limitations. But as those constraints are getting addressed the content is again a hero. As tech gets commoditised I wonder where else do we expect to see similar shifts. A somewhat similar shift occurred last decade in India in the online retail payments space. Early in 2010s there was this rush of pre-paid wallets that enabled customers to overcome the pain of online payments. So any product/company that had superior payments experience stood to win. But then UPI happened and retail/online payments is now more or less a solved problem in India and has become a commodity. So the focus is now on quality of product/service that's delivered, payments is taken for granted.

by pm90 4y ago

twobitshifter 4y ago

They switched from DVDs to streaming and then stalled. They should have diversified and kept going. Why doesn’t my Netflix include music and video games at this point? Who don’t I see live sports? Why am I not able to Netflix with someone in a video chat? Why don’t we have any crowdsourced content I can watch? Why isn’t Netflix used for virtual learning the world over?

ipqk 4y ago
They do have video games.
- IIsi50MHz 4y ago
  …But who knows this? And who remembers (more than vaguely) those very few rare times Netflix promoted to them anything interactive or game-like?
kumarvvr 4y ago
Why it did not jump on the streaming bandwagon really boggles me. Such an easy, available target.

elliekelly 4y ago

IIRC there was an internal “competition”, of sorts, between the two head original content buyers at Netflix. One took the HBO approach: buy high quality content, even if it’s expensive. The other had a spray and pray strategy: buy up all the cheap crap and hope you get a few hits. Long story short the Spray & Pray exec got promoted and the other exec got squeezed out. But now that all of the major studios have started their own streaming services (and have started being stingier with their licensing) original content is perhaps the most important driver of new subscriptions and subscription maintenance for a streaming platform. And it seems Netflix bet the house on building their library out of cheap crap like Emily in Paris and God’s Favorite Idiot with the occasional expensive (but still crappy) Ryan Reynolds action movie sprinkled in to keep things “fresh”. Netflix made a huge mistake when they went with the spaghetti against the wall strategy and for some reason they just keep doubling down to make their already shitty strategy even worse.

missedthecue 4y ago
I don't think Netflix had a choice. Who is selling good content anymore? HBO? They run their own thing now. Paramount? They've got their own thing now. Disney? They've got their own thing now. MGM? They're streaming through Amazon Prime now. Netflix was forced into this position by competition, not by internal decisions.
- thefounder 4y ago
  Netflix surely has a choice: to make quality movie series instead of the crap they push now. I'm the kind of person who used to watch the whole movie even if it was crap but netflix succeded in breaking this compulsive behaviour. It's just too much low quality content and the worst thing is that I can't even filter it out. Maybe there are few good movies but I'm not willing to watch all the crap just to find the very few diamonds in the mud/swamp. I think at some point people just give up and then avoid netflix like a plague. I still have a netflix subscription because it's shared with several family members but as soon as I get the OK from them I'm done with Netflix.
  - demadog 4y ago
    You’re not the 80%+ of consumers that eat up the cheap stuff and love it.
- elliekelly 4y ago
  I’m talking about original content. Not licensed. Netflix can buy a new series pitch the exact same way HBO and Paramount and Amazon Prime can.
mal-2 4y ago
That makes a lot of sense. The other thing I felt as a viewer was that any time a good show managed to get made, it would get canceled after two seasons at most. It became so commonplace that I've seen memes about it. If you're going to do spaghetti against the wall strategy, why wouldn't you continue to support shows that actually stick?

vishnugupta 4y ago

> Whats their competitive advantage? The tech is commoditized. +1. Content will become even more important as the bandwidth keeps increasing (hello, 5G!). Netflix solved some hairy problems back when streaming was hard due to bandwidth and other limitations. But as those constraints are getting addressed the content is again a hero. As tech gets commoditised I wonder where else do we expect to see similar shifts. A somewhat similar shift occurred last decade in India in the online retail payments space. Early in 2010s there was this rush of pre-paid wallets that enabled customers to overcome the pain of online payments. So any product/company that had superior payments experience stood to win. But then UPI happened and retail/online payments is now more or less a solved problem in India and has become a commodity. So the focus is now on quality of product/service that's delivered, payments is taken for granted.