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Comment by lugg | Hacker News Reader

If I go from playing 1 hour of fortnite a week and 19 hours of Netflix to 19 hours of fortnite and one hour of Netflix you better believe I'm cancelling my Netflix sub. Between 1 and 19 is a flipping point for a significant enough of users that it concerns Netflix.

Not sure what is weird about that.

I doubt server / network costs, while significant for netflix are worth the trade for less viewership or the reduction to being in the mind of their users.

Remember Netflix has ads too..

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I'm curious how Netflix seems to have failed to innovate at social media consumption in their platform.

If they're really worried about Fortnite, why haven't they made an effort to actually leverage network effects past cost scaling?

My primary reason to get Netflix if my friends have Netflix is so we can talk about the same (Netflix-only) shows.

But why not offer synced or simultaneous viewing with friends groups? Or per group commenting on episodes? Or anything that offers a truly different viewing experience that I can only get on Netflix?

I mean, Bandersnatch and Bird Box were all over Twitter for a few weeks after they came out, and their particular Twitter account is pretty engaging. I think a lot of us are thankful that Netflix hasn't adopted the Stories feature of most social media platforms. For the most part they follow the Unix philosophy of just doing one thing well.

> Netflix hasn't adopted the Stories feature

Boy have I got bad news for you... https://gfycat.com/FrighteningMassiveHart

Was it just me, or did anyone find Bandersnatch to be meh? I didn’t even finish it and I always liked choose your own adventure stories as a kid.

Netflix had all those social features, but they dropped them all.

If only... there were some sort of live streaming website, when thousands of people could get together and watch content at the same time, maybe even with a chat system.

Since the topic is fortnite, perhaps such a streaming website could even include gaming content!

You're right, and I am surprised Amazon hasn't come up with something like that... or at least acquire a smaller company that does it already, if they can find one.

Isn't this what they acquired Twitch for?

Sarcasm :)

That might not be true, if netflix offers something unique to justify the subscription. Eg a lot of people probably used to have netflix just for shows like house of cards, and the rest was just a bonus.

In the same way that I used to keep an xbox live subscription just for halo; any other game with online was a bonus, but not sufficient to justify subscribing. (CoD would be other reason, if I had ever cared for it)

However, I assume they depend on both, as at this point, the additional arbitrary selection of movies is the only value to me; particularly the fact that although I’ve stopped depending on it for significant screen time, the fact that its been dependable for one-off usage is sufficient value. (Im personally down to probably a single movie or two on netflix per month, maybe even less). But this is only a trait learned over time; any newcomer wouldn’t see this as valuable.

I watch a decent amount of Netflix and have never seen an ad.

Whereas Fortnite is itself just a big ad for their in-game purchases.

What country are you in? I've never seen a commercial on Netflix in the USA, Japan, or a few weeks in Europe. I guess there's probably some product placement here and there, and the auto-playing trailers are almost as obnoxious as ads?

Product placement is pretty common in Netflix's own shows, however they do it well so it doesn't feel like an ad. For example KFC in Stranger Things and Dunkin Donuts in House of Cards.

You could say they've come a long way from the infamous Playstation Vita placement in House of Cards: https://www.giantbomb.com/playstation-vita/3045-129/forums/h...

I'm surprised that is the one people mention, I remember seeing coke in every other episode. They got pretty sneaky about it eventually.

An old guy playing PlayStation vita (especially out of character) is more jarring than anyone drinking Coke.

There a ton of product placement in Netflix originals. Hell, Bandersnatch had an option to choose whether the character ate Kellogg's or Quaker cereal. (Although it wasn't a paid placement.)

https://adage.com/article/digital/netflix-s-bandersnatch-rev...

That ignores the reason you spent 19 hours on Netflix in the first place.

If you are still finding content that you are interested in, you will likely keep your subscription; even if you spend significantly less time using it.

You don't need to binge watch a series of events day to find value to keep the subscription.

On the other hand, how many people playing Fortnite for 19 hours a week pay for their own Netflix subscription vs using someone else's?

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