Slashdot Mirror
A Peek Into Netflix Queues
margaret writes "The New York Times has an interactive Web app where you can map the popularity of various Netflix titles by neighborhood, in a dozen different cities. Invasion of privacy or harmless voyeuristic fun? Either way, it's pretty interesting."
I can think of so many better things to be doing with my time than looking at what people are renting based on their ZIP code.
Does whining on Slashdot really count as something better?
Everyone in the neighborhood saw it in the theatre and so didn't need to rent it from Netflix.
We saw it at the Castro theatre about halfway through its total run and it was a full upper balcony sellout. It really was an important film to see as together as a community and I was glad to have taken part in what I felt was a community viewing.
That's actually really interesting to consider -- You could think of Netflix popularity as a band pass of the full spectrum of movie popularity. Imagine a few graphs for other channels that signify different levels of investment: theatrical viewing and DVD purchase above rental, cable viewing below it, and torrenting at the bottom. Now imagine these distributions overlaid on top of each other. I wonder what that graph would look like...
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
And then, you can take it to the next level: stats on which zip code examined which other zip code stats... The possibilities are endless: - which zip code is the most "self absorbed", (ie looked at its own stats) - which zip code is the most popular (stats looked up by other zip codes) - which zip code has the most self-confidence problems (looked at other zip codes' stats more than their own..) - which zip code is the most popular homophobic (stats most looked up by other zip codes, while the renting trend of homo movies is high) - and so on
Invasion of privacy or harmless voyeuristic fun?
What invasion of privacy? They're not showing what any particular person rented, just what the aggregate in a given area liked. If this is invasion of privacy, then so is any demographic statistic saying, for instance, that New Yorkers like hot dogs from a stand on the street or the baseball stadium over that cooked at home.
Allegedly real newspaper headline from 1998:
Man Struck by Lightning Faces Battery Charge
Letter to the Editor @ NY Times:
Dear Sir,
I find it highly innappropriate that you have made my personal information available via your website!
Sincerely,
Dr. Sanfransisco Bayarea
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun