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How Netflix Reverse Engineered Hollywood
Netflix is a major player in the entertainment industry in America. The company started out as a video renting company and slowly grew to the multimillion-dollar empire that it is today. With a worldwide membership of over 80 million subscribers, it is one of the most profitable ventures on the planet. Before it began offering movie-streaming services, Hollywood was very skeptical and was convinced it sought to take over the industry and in turn reduce the profits that were accrued. The company had other ideas that would help in taking over the film industry. The company understood that time would come when it would give viewers the chance to watch their favorite movies at the comfort of their home, on their PCs or even tablets. The company also understood that to give viewers the best choices; it would need to provide the best options and suggestions. The following paper discusses how Netflix uses both software and manpower to generate recommendations for its clients.
Netflix uses a sophisticated database to come up with suggestions as to what its subscribers should watch. The current system that Netflix has which recommends movies and shows for its subscribers seems to be so accurate that it can be frightening at times. It started out small but has since grown to become one of the most sophisticated algorithms anywhere on the planet. The company understood that it was important to sell and rent blockbusters as well older movies with smaller titles.

It was the only way the company would make a substantial profit. When Netflix was still in its infancy and had just about 1 million subscribers, it created a software called the Netflix Recommendation System. According to Madrigal, “some of the suggestions seem so specific that it is absurd.” CITATION Mad14 p 1 l 1033 (Madrigal 1). . The system was designed to offer suggestions of what to watch based on how a customer would rate any film or show he or she watched from show’s catalog (Null n.p). There are thousands of genres that are available on Netflix and arriving at or creating such genres has not been an easy task.
For the system to grow and be able to suggest a movie or show to a subscriber accurately, Netflix has had to invest in it. It is not only a feature that would require technological investment but also hundreds of person-hours that would help in making recommendations specific to a subscriber’s liking. It has taken them a lot of effort that involves gathering an endless number of movies and even paying people to watch the films and categorize them based on so many criteria. It was so complicated that people who watched the films had to be given a 36-page document that would enable them to categorize them correctly. “They captured dozens of movie attributes.”CITATION Mad14 p 2 l 1033 (Madrigal 2) After dedicating so much time, money and other resources, Netflix has come up with such an accurate system of suggestion that it has also enabled them to know what kind of movies, and shows the public enjoys, and just what can be done to bring in more viewers. Shows such as House of Cards have been the result of the simple analysis that was done so intensively that it enabled them to know what the client wants and consequently what to give them. There is no doubt the system looks futuristic.
The actual process of coming up with so many genres is a very complicated one. To understand just how thorough the process is, consider this. If an individual has just 50 friends and each friend recommends just three different genres, then that is 150 genres. Netflix has over 80 million subscribers, and although there cannot be a genre for each subscriber, the so-called micro-genres span to over 90,000. They are so many that they change with the modification of a number at the end of the company’s URL. These genres range from emotional independent movies to violent, suspenseful action and adventure from the 1980s to dark, suspenseful gangster dramas. There is practically a genre for everyone including those who want to watch films set in the Edwardian era or even children who crave watching an action adventure from the 1970s. The amount of data that Netflix has is so vast that getting it by hand is a problem. Using software like UBot will take you up to about 20 hours. It has even frightened Hollywood. CITATION Gro091 l 1033 (Grover, Satariano, and Levy)
What makes Netflix such a force to be reckoned with in the entertainment industry is the company’s ability to recommend pinpoint suggestions that make you wonder just how much data they have access to so that they can come up with such precise titles. The system that started out as Netflix Recommendation System is now better developed and has an enormous amount of algorithms that help in providing pinpoint suggestions to its subscribers. Through such technology, the company has well and truly reverse engineered Hollywood.
Works Cited
BIBLIOGRAPHY Grover, Ronald, Aam Satariano, and Ari Levy. Honest, Hollywood, Netflix is Your Friend. 12 December 2009. Website. 22 November 2016.
Madrigal, Alex. “How Netflix Reverse Engineered Hollywood.” The Atlantic (2014): 1-15.
Null, Christopher. How Netflix Is Fixing Hollywood By finding a market for niche titles–and keeping discs in constant circulation–the online DVD rental pioneer is shaking up the movie biz. 1 July 2003. Website. 22 November 2016.