The Netflix problem and how to solve it.

Spoiler Alert: there are too many choices

Raise your hand if you’ve ever spent more time scrolling through Netflix than actually watching a show. If you’ve raised your hand, then these ideas are for you…

Idea 1: Netflix LIVE

Netflix should curate a live channel/playlist of videos and when you log in, it’s playing in a player that takes up about 20% of the explore screen which you can close at anytime.

Concept demo by Tsuriel

It won’t start at the beginning of the episode, it will be live, that way everyone who goes onto Netflix is watching the same thing.

Like on TV, being live brings with it advantages, like:

1. The enjoyment you get when you know people are discovering things at the same exact time as you. Imagine when the next season of House of Cards comes out the entire season starts to play on that channel, each episode back to back, when some spoilery thing inevitably happens, you, knowing which of you friends are watching, will message them “WTF just happened! OMG! OMG! OMG!” and that sense of community makes what you watch so much more enjoyable. (can even be on a different page like netflix.com/live so it doesn’t accidentally spoil it for anyone)
2. Sometimes you just don’t know what you want, you get all up in your head “is this something someone with good taste should be watching” but sometimes a show that is not necessarily made for your demo can still surprise you and do what all shows are meant to do: Entertain!
3. The beginning of movies and shows can sometimes start slow and sometimes we just don’t have the patience to sit through all that. When it’s live it gives the potential to just get sucked in by the scene being played at the time and if you want to go back later and start from the beginning, just click on the title bar in the video player.

Of course if you log in to the kids section of Netflix it will show a kids’ channel instead.

This idea can be explored even further with live channels, and it can stay on the last channel i was watching so that if i’m into comedy it’ll have something more relevant to me everytime i go to Netflix.

Idea 2: Netflix AUTO PLAY

When you go onto Netflix, the mini player will start playing what it thinks you will enjoy at that moment. It can consider a few things:

1. What have you watched before: for example it sees you are in middle of a show you haven’t finished, but Netflix knows the show gets better the further in you watch, it might start playing where you left off.
2. What’s the hot new show everyone will be talking about the next morning.
3. What day of the week it is. If it’s a weeknight it might be a 20 min. sitcom, if it’s Friday night it will get you started on something you can binge on.

The best part is if you want to explore what to watch, then just continue to scroll, scroll and scroll some more. The choice is all yours.

Extra Ideas for the guys at Netflix:

1. Netflix Playlists: Example: Top 10 “Halloween” episodes. These editorialized listicles are popular and Netflix can provide an extra service to its binge watching members with these curations of episodes, again, making it easy to start watching when you don’t know what to watch.
2. Trailers/previews: It will help me get a feel for what i’m about to watch and convince those with me as well.
   Update: now available for netflix originals, it’s a start
3. Skip TV intros/credits: Especially when I’m binge watching. It can be a setting that just skips all intros when you watch episodes back to back, or it can be a “skip intro” button that only shows during the actual intro/credits sequence to forward you to the actual show.
   Update: Netflix is testing such a feature
4. “Already watched” button: A way to tell Netflix to stop showing me “Top picks for you” that I already watched outside of Netflix.
5. Share links: Recommend movies to friends, and if my friend doesn’t have a Netflix account he just sees the trailer. This makes it easy for my friends to tell me what to watch so I don’t have to choose.
6. Short clips: The idea being that instead of posting show teasers and trailers to youtube, put it on Netflix and make it open to all users, even those who don’t have membership.

If you would like to see these become a thing, share it around. You never know who might see it.