Netflix Is Ending Reviews July 30th

goombah99 writes: Netflix is sending emails to subscribers announcing the end of user-authored reviews on Netflix. Past reviews are being archived. The stated reason is declining usage. This follows on the previous years' decision to remove range voting for user ratings (0 to 5 stars) and substitute a thumbs up/down approval voting system. One suspects that the former is an unintended consequence of the latter, since the purpose of people who write a review is to try to explain the nuances of their decision. An inexpressive rating system defeats that. It can be argued that approval voting has technical advantages in aggregating ratings for a recommendation engine as it doesn't need to normalize the biases in a rating system between different users and mostly heads off gaming the system with exaggerated degrees of rating. But evidently that was also a necessary component of the review process itself regardless of its utility for recommendation engines. The email that Netflix is sending users is short and to the point: "You contributed a review on Netflix within the last year. We wanted to let you know that this feature will be retired on July 30th due to declining usage. We appreciate you taking time to write a review. All of your reviews will be available at netflix.com/reviews through July 30th."

Comments

dumped them already.

[fish_in_the_c]

This is a company who provided a very useful service one. Had lots of content I was interested in seeing.
Now-day's they self produce stuff I'm mostly not interested in and have removed many things I'd like to watch.
They have basically been ignoring the core of what made them attractive to users like me ( lots of old and some new content cheap). In favor of other business, but I apparently am not a member of the demographic they are marketing too.
So, I dumped them and went on the greener pastures. Lot's of other options out there.

This is all part of their grand master plan.

[cyn1c77]

I believe this is all part of their grand plan to mitigate their large loss of third-party content which started several years ago.

They redesigned their website to be more graphical and less text based several years ago, making it hard to simply sort highly rate titles and scan though them quickly. I thought this was so that the user could not tell how limited their third party movie content was.

Then they introduced their "thumbs up/down" rating system supposedly because their users did not understand how their 5 star rating system was being used differently than the convention that the rest of the world follows. At that time, they also moved the reviews for each show to a separate (last) tab under each show's view.

This latest change completes the transformation. You can now only see what shows Netflix wants you to see unless you do a direct text search. No more sorting and no more reading reviews.

Personally, I am amazed that this is working for them, but I appear to be in the minority. Prior to their website redesign, I was a strong proponent of their service. After the redesign, I was convinced that they would tank and sold my stock in their company. However, their stock price has only gone up from there.

Re:This is all part of their grand master plan.

[markdavis]

>"Personally, I am amazed that this is working for them, but I appear to be in the minority"

+1 to your post and add me to your "minority." I saw all the changes you listed and thought exactly the same things. At least on the DVD site I had some control, on the streaming site, it is a wasteland of annoying scroll bars that tell me almost nothing about what I might want to watch or what is available. No real sorting, no real consideration about my ratings or those of others, no way to really see what is ACTUALLY new. It is beyond frustrating.

I, too, am convinced they are doing all this to:

1) Hide or remove tools from users to keep them "engaged"
2) Make it look like they have more content than they do
3) "Guide" people into accepting what they do have
4) Censor feedback that might lower watching what they do have

Complete loss of core values

[GoRK]

Netflix was popularized on their ability to innovate and deliver a targeted experience. It was so important to them that they used to sponsor a million dollar prize to anyone who could improve upon their ability to match content to users.

Two things happened simultaneously that changed this:

1) They started making their own content; some of which is good but most of which is shit.

and

2) They started losing good content from 3rd parties, leaving them with mostly shit.

A good, balanced ratings system doesn't exactly work in an environment where you have very little of value to offer and you want to prioritize your own garbage besides. Netflix has had to absolutely gut and now flush one of the core innovations that built them into the juggernaut they are today; they are fast becoming just another new media studio. HBO is their competitor now. I yearn for the Netflix catalog of yore.

Problem is I'm not sure who fucked up here.