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Comment by libraryatnight | Hacker News Reader

I'm going to probably seem stupid here. I don't understand why Netflix should be obsessed with how long people stream. I keep seeing this metric and I don't get it for something subscription based. I have Netflix, I have no intention of getting rid of it but I do not watch it that much. It's not ad supported, so if they have my subscription isn't that enough? Who cares how long I watch?

At the current subscription cost, keeping Netflix is a negligible expense for me and I'm not wealthy. So long as they put out 3-4 interesting things to watch a year (be it originals or something licensed) I can't imagine I'd cancel. I'm not looking to fill my days and nights, just something to kill a little time here and there or unwind for an hour or so a day. Am I an outlier? Do sub numbers drop if users can't sustainably spend 4+ hours a day on their platform?

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Is it possible that more hours of streaming for a show somehow reduces the purchase price? In return the content producer gets more exposure (in their thinking).

From Netflix perspective, the income per subscriber is fixed, so now focus on reducing operating expenses (including content acquisition). Maybe?

I wouldn't go so far as saying you're an outlier, but nuanced individual motivations for retaining a subscription are hard to measure at scale. Lots of people would love to cut $10/mo from their budget, and the thing you barely use is one of the easiest candidates, so keeping hours-viewed/subscriber up is both easy to measure and likely a very high-quality signal of subscriber retention.

It gets a little more insidious than that. They really want to lock you in, make netflix the only thing you do during your limited free time. The more dependent you are on Netflix, the less time you spend on competitors services or even any other timesink for that matter, and the less likely you are to unsubscribe from Netflix.

Only problem is, by the sound of the comment sections in these netflix threads cropping up on HN and Reddit once a month or so, people are being pushed away. The whole thing appears to be backfiring from the outside, but who knows what their internal data tells them.

IMO, Netflix is at the stage where it collects mass preference to produce better movies by themselves, which creates a virtuous cycle for their bottom-line -- addiction to the platform of the mass & quality production.

I would think they will start charging more if the growth stalls AND enough stickiness of the platform is proven. Currently, they are making profits and growing in terms of revenue, so as long as the founder keeps the control and the company is profitable, I think it might make sense to pursue more subscription at the cost of short-term profitability.

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