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October 02, 2006

Netflix: "Who wants to be a millionaire?"

Side note: I go for weeks without updating my blog and then when I do, I am suddenly inspired to blog about everything. So instead of posts spread out evenly over the weeks/months, I end up with multiple posts on the same day... and then nothing for weeks.

I just saw an article on the New York Times Website in which Netflix is offering a million dollars to the person that comes up with a better ratings/recommendation system. Netflix revolutionized the way people rent movies, taking the market by storm to the extent that Blockbuster video, whose name had become synonymous with "renting a movie", had to reinvent themselves... doing away with late charges and trying to regain market share by opening up a "DVD by mail" channel in their own business. (I forget the statistic, but they were down significantly at one point thanks to this shift in how people rent videos.

This new move by Netflix is brilliant, in the age of "Web 2.0" where the "user is in control" netflix is making a database of 100 million movie ratings available as part of a competition with a goal of improving their recommendation system.

A very bold, and brave move by Netflix... I applaud you.

Posted by Andrew Spencer at 09:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The UK's Hottest Online Brands...

Earlier this year, when I first arrived in London, I found a report by AOL called Broadband Britain: The end of asymmetry. It quoted stats from (I believe) the IAB UK about the growth of broadband penetration in British homes (which jumped from 59% to 73% in the previous year). This meant that the UK was about to experience a significant change in how they accessed, and therefore how they used the Internet. Culturally, I knew that this would also bring about a change in perception about the Internet as a tool for communication (and I don't just mean advertising, I mean as a social tool).

I have also posted on my blog about the growth of online video as a viable means of getting your message out there. Even if your message is a personal message that simply needs to be seen by family and friends elsewhere in the world, not an advertising message that someone is paying you to deliver, the Web is now set up to provide this service. In fact, the Web is becoming the place where you edit your videos as well as to send them out.

Recently, Nielsen Netratings published a list of the UK's hottest online brands (this link is to a PDF file) and when you look down the list, it validates what the AOL report was saying (as well as my own hunches) about the future of the online world in the UK.

The hottest brands in the UK are:

1. YouTube (Video Sharing Website)
2. Flickr (Photo Management and Sharing)
3. MySpace (Social Networking)
4. American Express (Financial Services)
5. Photobucket (Image/video hosting and sharing)
6. Mozilla (Web Browsing Software)
7. Vodafone (Telecommunications)
8. Bebo (Social Networking)
9. Odeon (Cinemas)
10. B&Q (Home and Garden Retail)

The proliferation of sites on this list that are to do with sharing one's life with one's friends (or mates, since I'm in the UK) shows the impact of more people having Broadband access, and thus spending more time on the Web (not connecting to it)...

Posted by Andrew Spencer at 05:49 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack