Ha, that is so true. Netflix is infamous for this. It’s to the extent that I cannot start watching a Netflix production unless I know it’s finished or if it’s a big hit from day one (so I know it won’t be cancelled, like The Witcher). It’s odd, because Netflix’s reputation for prematurely cancelling content without resolving their endings has extended to beyond just youth-dominated social media. For example, my parents of all people who cannot use a computer nor the internet, don’t like investing in new Netflix content because they’ve been burned too many times from incomplete series. That’s just like me. It’s sad because Netflix dared to create decent and interesting content, but now it would be hard to escape their infamy.
People don’t want to watch shows in case it gets cancelled early. Then Netflix cancels the show early because there wasn’t enough interest.
If they didn’t have the reputation people would watch the shows and if it’s good tell their friends. At this point it seems like everyone just stays away though.
They could always just keep making new seasons to add to their catalog and eventually people might watch it, but it seems risky to spend the money.
Following in the footsteps of that other company starting with the alphabet G where products are in perpetual beta?
I think all of those companies fall into common problem of falling deep into A/B test local maximum. It's impossible to rework entire site at once, especially for an A/B test.
Plus I hate their way of trying to soup up stale content by making various sexy versions of cover art. Like The Net with Sandra Bullock. A long forgotten, mediocre, and comically out-dated tech thriller. People were wandering right past it on Blockbuster Video shelves. That’s how old and stale it is. Yet Netflix goes and sources these sexy shots of Bullock in an attempt to get me to watch it. I find the whole thing very insulting.
- Disney has Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar, and a long tail of childhood classic films. - HBO has Warner Brothers, DC, Cartoon Network (including a nostalgia back catalog), the best TV shows made in the 00s, and a long tail of adult films. - Netflix's largest successes in the last two years are Tiger King, Squid Game, The Witcher, and a long tail of shows cancelled after Season 1 and short-run miniseries.
At this point, Netflix is a last-resort source of entertainment for me, even after (ad-riddled) YouTube. I mostly only use it to watch their weird reality shows (Blown Away, Sugar Rush) and check out shows friends recommend. I suspect even Paramount+ has a larger selection of TV shows I'd like to watch compared to Netflix.
Is it on the discoverability side or the watching side?
Watching is a seamless experience IMO - It really does just work, all the buttons and responses are perfect.
It constantly recommends the same stuff over and over despite the fact that I never click on it because I don't want to watch it.
It doesn't notify me when there's new episodes or seasons to a show I've previously watched (a year is a long time to wait for new episodes).
I'm not a fan of the UX.
Somethings are much better for everyone to have a common experience without it being unique.
Your second and third point though are accurate for me too. Thanks for explaining.
The UI constantly shuffles around, having to hunt for my list or currently watching shows is particularly annoying.
Incessant autoplay that couldn't be disabled for years, and still can't be in all cases.
Awful controls for browsing content. The categories are meaningless and constantly changing.
There's no way to find new shows I'm likely to like within the app. They refuse to have any sort of objective ratings and the custom ones are unbelievably bad, even after years of watching. I have to go to outside sources any time I want to find a new show.
I could go on. Prime gets a lot of criticism for their UX but I actually much prefer it to Netflix's. At least with Prime the ratings have some signal and the layout is simple and consistent. It's not pretty but at least it doesn't go out of the way to annoy me, which is just fine with me. Amazon has probably spent far less on their UX but has a better result.
Even so much so I can’t find shows I saw ads for in 2017 or 2018 even existing because they were so bad. It makes me feel the Mandela effect is happening.
Features such as only using company generated ratings, aggressively cancelling shows, and the lack of ability to browse/sort/filter the catalog, in favor of Netflix pushing the recommendations they choose on users, is probably great for quarterly KPIs but bad for long term customer satisfaction.
Netflix is of course already a behemoth and not going anywhere but I expect their future to be much more of a generic media company than an elite tech company.