The Netflix Effect
from the fighting-the-big-names dept
Wired Magazine takes a look at what Netflix can do to fend off Blockbuster and Walmart, who both recently entered the DVD-rental-by-mail market. The article suggests that Netflix's recommendation engine is its secret weapon. The movie studios love it, because it breathes new life into smaller films that weren't box-office smashes. Some of the top rental films on Netflix did horribly at the box-office, but are making the studios lots of extra money via Netflix. Blockbuster and Walmart are companies that focus on the lowest common denominator, and thus (the theory goes) are likely to just push the big popular hits, and not worry about the smaller independent films that are so successful on Netflix. I wonder, though, how sustainable an advantage that really is. It really is not that hard for Blockbuster and Walmart to add their own recommendation engine - and to put plenty of resources behind it to make it even better than Netflix's system.
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I find that having a smaller queue gets you a faster turnaround - I guess it's because they can't mark all your rentals as "Long wait" or nobody would use them.
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Netflix
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