August 19, 2002
nettle on Netflix, part 5
by Brian L. Dear
Even More on Ratings
Neil from Netflix responds:
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I agree with the discussion in your matrix.
How would you like it to work?
I take it you've seen this gadget (on the Genre pages...)
We did experiment with yet another dimension of saw/didn't-see. Some customers were reluctant to rate low stars to a movie they hadn't seen but knew they wouldn't want to watch, in case it affected the average rating for everyone else. In the end we found that the "not interested" button was a tolerable compromise, but focus group work with more complex alternatives was rather negative. Neil/. |
I agree that adding an "own" button all over the place, especially within already-cluttered lists, would be a bad thing to do. If the "own" capability were to be added to the site, then it makes sense to me to add it only to the item detail page for a particular DVD. So if you see "When Harry Met Sally" somewhere, you can click on the thumbnail image of the DVD cover or click on the title link, taking you to the "When Harry Met Sally" detail page. On that page, I wouldn't mind a "I own this DVD -- please don't recommend it to me" checkbox or button.
I think the key thing I've discovered in the past 24 hours with Netflix is that Netflix seems to think that when a customer thinks "I saw that movie already" what they're really saying is "I rented that movie already." Furthermore, that "I want to rate this movie" equals "I rented this movie (either from Netflix or somewhere else) and I have no intention of renting it ever again".
I disagree. "I saw that movie already" could mean all kinds of things. Surely I am not the only moviegoer in the world (who knows! maybe I am, and this will be yet another discovery) that has seen movies in theaters and thought "I wanna rent that when it comes out"?
"I want to rate this movie" can mean "I saw it and want to rate it so high as a way of Netflix reminding me about it in the future so I'll rent it." I can't believe I'm the only customer out of 700,000 customers who thinks this way.
I don't think Netflix's current messaging makes it clear enough that "If you rate something, you're never gonna see it here again." I think that's a dangerous assumption that could hurt revenue.
If I go to Blockbuster, I walk through the aisles and see lots of movies I want to rent. But I have a limited budget, and limited amount of time, so I don't rent them all at once. It might be months or years before I get around to a particular title. I try to make a mental note that I wanna rent X and Y and Z in the future, but then a month later when I return to Blockbuster and they've rearranged all the shelves, I don't remember the three titles I wanted to rent. Is Netflix "ignoring" this really valuable info I'm sharing with it, about movies I intend to rent in the future? As a user, I assumed incorrectly, it seems, that the only way I could convey my intent to rent was to rate highly, so that Netflix would keep recommending the movies to me. The underlying assumption of Netflix seems to be you should only rate stuff you've seen but never intend to rent.
Shouldn't there be a way (maybe not through ratings) of the customer indicating to Netflix that "oh I want to rent that one, keep reminding me about it so I'll eventually rent it"? Perhaps I'm talking Amazon wish-list here.
UPDATE: Continued in Part Six...
Posted by brian at August 19, 2002 12:45 PM
Well, if there is a movie that I want Netflix to remember that I want to rent it, I worked out this procedure:
I click "Add".
Usually works.
If you don't want to rent a particular movie right away, no problem, demote it in your queue. The only situation that I can think of that this wouldn't work is if you don't have enough items in your queue to keep this one from shipping next. But I fail to see where this is a real problem.