Curation is human: Seed&Spark’s next step in diversifying entertainment
I wrote a few weeks ago about how if we’re going to succeed in building a truly diverse landscape for entertainment, we’re going to have to break the context most people use to choose movies. It also means bucking some of the common trends in the streaming landscape.
But first, a scene. Imagine, if you will:
You’re out to lunch with a friend whose taste you like. You ask them what movies and shows they’ve seen recently that they’d recommend. They take a deep breath, and then in one long, seemingly endless monologue, they list 100 movies and shows — some you’ve heard of and some you haven’t — and they don’t provide any further context for how to make a decision.
That’s what most streaming platform “recommendation” engines are doing.
They are algorithms — a set of rules built to work like puppies. They are SO EAGER to please you, they don’t want to risk missing one single title you might possibly like.
The thing is, humans watch movies about humans — or at least, made by humans. We watch movies for a variety of reasons, and those reasons change day to day. Just because we watch something to completion doesn’t mean we enjoyed it. (Anyone else ever hate-watch stuff just to better inform your searing criticism of it? Just me? Cool cool.) Just because we watched something and enjoyed it today doesn’t mean our opinion of it won’t change over time. (La La Land — loved watching it, and the more I thought about it the angrier it made me. But that is for an entirely different searing Medium post.)
But those sweet little math rules don’t know any of this. So in an effort to do their jobs well (and they SO WANT TO DO THEIR JOBS WELL), they recommend to you every possible thing in the universe of things you have watched (not necessarily enjoyed) and hope you pet them and say ‘GOOD DOG’. In fact, recommendation algorithms on your streaming platforms run the same risk of creating a content bubble that Facebook does of creating a viewpoint bubble — you might not want to only watch stuff with protagonists who look like you, but that’s all that’s getting “recommended,” so…
Recommendations, in the streaming world, are not the same as curation, though those two things get conflated a lot. Curation has to be done by humans for humans, which is not exactly scalable. And it wouldn’t make sense for me to employ people to stay up all night to curate a playlist just for you whenever you feel like it. (Though I’d like to, and don’t think I haven’t considered it.) So how to we build curation into a streaming platform that can serve the 24/7 needs of audiences without also employing millions of curators?
Look, it’s really hard to guess out of thin air what you want to watch on a particular night. So what we’ve done at Seed&Spark is just put really excellent movies and shows on the platform. That way, we feel confident we can be more like your trusted friend — the one who’s always finding great stuff to watch from the four corners of the earth (and the underground of the city you live in). We’re launching a brand new streaming library experience today to show you we’re not here to add to your decision fatigue (lord knows, we all have it), we want to give you about four things we think you’ll find exciting. That’s right. Four.
On our new library overview page, that’s generally how many we’ll surface for you in each category:
And like you, we also read the news and we are also scared about what’s happening with our data, so rather than skim it from your authenticated apps, we’re just gonna ask you for a little direction. For example, you can tell us what mood you’re in, and we’ll surface films that fit the bill:
And when you tell us what mood you’re in, like a good friend, we’ll start with just FOUR recommendations. Not in, like, alphabetical order. In the order we’re most excited to present them to you. And if you want more choices, you can refresh the recommendations — but also maybe try something first! You might be pleasantly surprised.
And we’ve even been presumptuous about what you might be looking for and curated some mood-based playlists (because you know, we are also humans who watch stuff):
Or maybe you’ve been noodling on something specific — an idea or a theme — and want to watch something around that. Here, we do want to provide enough choices that we might catch your eye, but not so many that you’re paging through for days:
And of course, we have the good ol’ tried and true genres and filters to explore however YOU (a real live person) want right at this moment. Our goal is to make the experience of finding something to watch easy and efficient, but also more human and delightful. Because this is a human artform. And you’re not a customer or a data point, you’re a person. (Unless you’re a bot, I guess.)
And, as always, I want to hear from you! Explore the library, let us know what you think. You can tweet me @emilybest or leave a comment here.
