The Netflix Community

This is a rough-draft post I'm writing about the type of communities that can and should form around the entertainment we consume through Netflix.


First, community around Neflix is sort of stunted. The biggest community feature on Netflix is movie recommendations (e.g., you might like this movie because people like you liked it....). There's also a "friends" tab (pictured above), which let's you see what people who you're connected with are watching.

Rather than what it is, I've been thinking about what it should be. It should be the center for all the Movie and TV entertainment we consume.

* Open it up. Movie, actor and director pages shold be definitive, open for all the web to see, link to and interact with. These can be central to how Netflix Members plan their entertainment lives, of course, but also resources to all the web, and of course great advertisements for the Netflix community.
* Completely rethink friends in the context of netflix. People in your email address book, yes. But also people who like movies like you.
* Find new ways for members to talk to each other about common interests.
* I talk to my friends about movies all the time (tv too), but none of this dynamic is coming through on netflix recommendations (shouldn't netflix to tell me to watch the movie all of my friends are watching and loving, so that we can talk about it at the party this weekend...)
* It's locked up. Netflix is gaining some traction with their API. Unlock this data, and let other people remix your social behavior around movies and TV. Maybe someone else can do the queue better than netflix can.
* More to come