How Planet Earth — and the Netflix homepage — get made
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Welcome to the verge cast the flagship podcast of multiple one camera setups. I'm a friend, David piers, and I am currently sitting here at my desk comparison shopping monitors. So I do this thing where I would say, once every nine month or so, I get this idea in my head that what I need is a different number of screens of different size.

Sometimes i'm like, i'm just gonna laptop guy. I'm going to be more focus. I'm just gonna sit here and look at this one small screen.

It's going to keep me on task. It's going to be great. That never works. So then i'm like, okay, i'm going to have a command station. I'm going to get a bunch of monitors.

One of them going to be vertical, one of them gonna curved, one going to be humongous. I'm going to get so much done, you're going to freak out. You don't even know that doesn't work either.

And then eventually, I end up back at one monitor. Right now. I have one twenty foreign four k monitor. I've had this for the last year. So IT works fine, but it's starting to feel kind of small.

So what i'm going to do next is attempt to not swing one where the other on this pendulum, but just had one more monitor, maybe twenty seven inches, maybe twenty four. Everything's on sale, who knows? Anyway, we have an awesome show coming up free today.

Today turned out to be one of the the episodes where we're kind of accidentally on a theme, and I would say the theme is how stuff appears on your television. We're going to talk to the folks who made planet earth, the documentary series from BBC, all about the technology IT takes to make that show and to get into the lives of animals and the planet. Then we're gone to talk to pat flemming, who is one of the heads of product at netflix, all about recommendations and basically what IT takes to show you exactly what you wanna watch at exactly the right time.

It's much harder and much higher stakes than you might think. All of that is coming up in just a second. But first, I have to figure out if this issues monitor and looking at is different from this other issues monitor and looking at, because i've been staring at these two pages for ten minutes and I just realized they might be the same monitor.

That's how this is going. This is the verge cast. sec. n. sec.

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Welcome back. The thing you should know before we get into this segment is that i'm kind of obsessed with the T. V series planet earth. We can now show life on our planet in antony new ways, bring new concept to animals than ever before, and reveal new wildlife dramas for the very first time.

The truth is, i'll watch anything that's just like slow moving drone shots of beautiful landscapes and then super tight shots of animals, while someone talks in a cool accent about a whole part of the earth i've never heard of before. And there are a lot of those shows out there. But planet earth does IT Better than everybody else.

I mean, just like, listen to this clip for a second from planet earth too. He listens carefully to pinpoint his target. It's moving.

A, O, and we come on. That is the stuff right there. I love IT.

Anyway, the third plant series is out now. It's been seven years since season two air. And now we get more play earth. And I mean, this is not a spoiler, and it's not surprising, but it's awesome. And it's actually a really fund snapshot of technology progress.

These folks spend years trying to access new places and get new kinds of shots and tell new stories about the world in different kinds of ways. And so much of that is actually about technology. So I call up two of the people who worked on planet or three feo web and alex waters to get into the weeds a bit about the tech involved in making a series like this.

I see I web, i'm a producer director on the extreme episodes, an earth three.

my name's alex waters, and i'm an assistant producer on planet earth day.

Between them, they ve basically seen how all of the sausage is made. I had this theory when I started watching plant three, that the big difference is going to be how much less gear was involved in making every episode. Maybe they'd shoot everything on front phones, and certainly the big cameras would be smaller and more manuvers.

Maybe you can shoot with like a phone, A D S L R and A D J I drone. And boom, you're done. But then you watch the behind the scenes at the end of every episode.

And no, it's still a ton of gear. There's one whole thing that's just a panning shot of all the batteries they had to charge and it's terrifying to look at. And theo said, actually, if anything, it's more gear this time.

Oh, like a hundred percent we really need is so much stuff we want you to feel micro. We wanted to kind of get as much moving image as possible. Slide as a matter, we are in quite sure what to will be, right? And actually, we took a lot of stuff, but almost all of IT we used actually for at least one shot the time.

Yes, you take a bit of kit out to a location and you sits in a box and you're like, well, that was a waste of time and effort, but on this occasion, actually, the poor people who Carried IT around the cave, they did not do IT in vain. IT was worthwhile, like there was so much we used. But the funny thing is, a lot of that behind the scenes segment that was actually shot with iphone, and we found that because there is that in built software that processing the image is more clearly that, say, camp arter, which is just basically built for for outdoor use, that we would Normally take as a behind the scene camera.

The iphone was processing IT and you could just get that life feedback of what you're filming and IT dealt with the noise and with the low light. So well that that actually became the easiest thing. I mean, you're got in your pocket and I dream of the day that we can just take that out as on main makeup camera. So easy.

maybe by planet earth, for when I guess will be on the iphone 12， it'll be fully up for the task. Probably not. But we can hope for now, though, making a show like this is still an incredible amount of work and an incredible amount of specialized equipment like the microphones that alex and a crew used to capture these tiny things called three hoppers and an epo de titled forests.

This tree of mother communicates with her Young, encouraging them to stay together. So the chicken js. These things are the size of a pin head, so they're not easy to find or capture at all.

So what alex and the other producers do in a situation like that is they talk to researchers and scientists who know these animals really well and know where they'll be and how to interact with them. They're actually, as a result, sometimes able to storyboard the shots. They are going to get knowing how these animals work. But to be there IT really never seems to go to plan at all.

I was talking to a scientist in amErica called rex coco ft, who is an absolute genius. And he spends his life listening in on conversations between animals, specifically tree hoppers. So he was really key to this, and he helped us develop the technology to be able to listen in on them.

And then a long side that we had, haier, who was a specialist use of talk for, actually, and he was the one who brought the story to us about the tree hop is interacting with this sibiu tic relationship with bees. They are like body guard these bees coming and protect the the tree hops. So actually was a combination of different scientists, and I spent a lot of time talking to them and planning in advance for the shoot.

But the tree hoppers, it's inaudible to the human. yeah. So we use these peso discs that we would attach a microphone, and we would put them on the branches to be able to listen in on this world of these tiny little insects while they communicate to each other.

They all have different languages, over three thousand species, and they all communicate with different sounds, and they mean different things. So some of them talk to each other about finding a mate. Some of them tell that each other where food sources are.

Others will talk about where predators are, which is part of the sequence that we filmed. So they are absolutely fascinating. And there sounds a really bizarre. They sound like they out space or something.

There are stories like this for basically every single frame and moment of planet earth. Like there's this one shot in the extreme episode, where were inside this huge colony of butterflies, hundreds of thousands of them all honker down for the winter. And if you deserve these butterflies, you're gonna send thousands of them flying off, which a ruins the shot and b also probably kills a lot of the butterflies. So you end up having to get creative, trying to figure out how .

to get in there. The fun thing about this suit is IT relied on a very specific, but of technology, which is socks. Without socks, the whole shoe would have been ruined.

So these butterflies, they can't really afford to lose two mount energy over that winter period, otherwise they won't make IT through. So the crew had to be as quite as possible, which literally meant take your issues and walk around in socks. So they be setting up table dollars on a tree without butterflies on.

They said, you know, put one on. And then they're be kind of moving this cable silently through. They have their socks on and they just be, they just be waiting.

Meanwhile, is it's not actually that warm, a place that looks kind of quite nice, warm and cozy, but is actually quite a high altum forest in mexico drops below freezing easily at night, which is half the problem for the butterflies. But the butterflies, they have this know perfectly ecosystem in the canopy, which keeps them crew on the ground that was less coming. But socks who knew that .

some shots they know they can get, animals have patterns. Big caves are probably still going to be there next year. One thing i've heard from a lot of nature filmmakers over the years is that if you just show up and stay there, eventually most animals will get used to you and just Carry on living their lives so you can get what you need as long as your patient enough.

That's why you see a lot of highs. And camera trapps, really a camera traps, actually a staple of planet earth. You set up a camera in some slide, hidden, but very central place.

Turn IT on and just wait and knowing where to put those cameras and actually how to place them and angle them and focus them is a real skill. Like when you are prepared to capture eight thousand hours of footage trying to catch a glimpse of a snow leopard. Mongolia.

the guy who did, that, guy who jack Davis is really specialized in these camera traps, and he has this amazing the ability to get into the ahead of animal. And you know, when you're setting up the camera, p is going to be the right high. If you set up, you know, the height of my heads, you're never, you know, up the film.

Anything is going to be down at the right. But I like, you know, you want to make IT cinematic as well as functional. So you get IT down, you get IT set up and you have to call through the frame, right, pretending your a snow lapid, to kind of mimic the the action.

But also, and this is a thing you hear from nature filmmakers over and over, is sometimes you just get lucky.

But I see my favorite shot in that sequence was one actually designed by the snow light of themselves. The camera trap was placed down, but the cat decided I didn't really like the position of that. So they like IT robed themselves on IT.

They Carried IT, they'd moved IT and they just put IT down, right? And then a couple of days later I think IT was the cassine cat walked down right in front of IT. But what what the friend had done was because it'd been put a slight angle, but also pointed the ground.

There was a super show that the field and the cats has placed its foot right in the midst of that depth field. And it's like the most perfect snow lepper shot you can have. He can't take credit for that because this is not after the data.

There are a lot of moments in making something like this where you just prepare as best you can and then wait as long as possible. But sometimes you're literally only going to get one shot, like there's this one moment in the forest episode where a tree, almost two hundred feet tall goes crashing down in the middle of a forest. Know if a tree falls in the forest are not there to film IT does IT not that a terrible job anyway, it's a really hard thing to film IT turns out .

the tree fall was really complicated and took a huge amount of planning, as you can imagine, an a big risk sessile I had to write. But yeah, so that one, we had quite a big crew. We had three join Operators who are flying at the same time.

So two, the drones were static to keep IT simple and and so know no disturbances within each other shots. And then one that was moving a reacting with the tree as IT fell. So that's like a sweeping shot that pulls back.

And then we had ground cameras. So myself, phone fan out and another camera person, or we were Operating the ground cameras, we had six of them placed. We knew this tree was around sixty meters high. We'd measured IT with the drone and sort of seen how high IT was with that.

And then we've measured on the ground how far we need the cameras to be away, to get this wish of all the leads and everything breaking, coming up towards the camera, which is one of the shots you'll see in the forests. Epo de, but, you know, not having the camera is completely smashed, as in the rains, which is a real wrist. K, you know, some of the cameras would go praise, and we would like, you know, if we lose, go praise, and it's not the end of the world.

But, you know, some of them of these red cameras, little do you know, how much should they? They are very of cameras with very expensive glenda. So they were based more at the base of the tree, sort of where we knew IT definite, wasn't onna fall in that direction? We then worked with some locals who allowed us to film them felling.

They selectively felt the tree. They told us. We know that when we take this root off is going to fall in that direction.

So we knew the direction that is going to fall. So there was a lot of planning, a lot of talking with the local people, and that was key. And none of the cameras got smashed, which was absolutely amazing.

I could do this forever. Honestly, there are fun technology stories behind basically everything in the show, but let's just do two more here. First, there is the section of the extreme episode filmed in a cave in vietnam that is thought to be the world's largest cave is called hanging sundown. The cruise spent more than two weeks, in this case, filming in in all sorts of different ways. But the most remarkable thing, I think, that they did is a two drones set up to try and capture the true size and scope of this place.

We have a team of forth metopes, but we chose one in particular because he had been down inside handsome down cave has been down like almost fifteen times, something like that. So he knows the cave really well. He's shot a lot for himself, but he'd never done what we wanted to do, which is take cut of cinema cameras down there and show the cave off in a different, in a different way.

He'd also never spent, I don't think, more than three or four. So, so the fact that we were going to spend eighteen days underground in that cave, sort of blue is mind, and also made him incredibly excited. At the same time, he was like, oh my god, think about what I can do that here.

So first of what he thought about was how to light IT, right? Because, as you say, the paradox of filming underground is that, unless you are light, there is nothing to say, and yet you want to to keep some of the dog to keep IT like mysterious. But also, IT helps with that sense of scale.

If you like the whole thing, you lose that scale, you lose the texture, you lose everything. So what what we decided to do and and with his assistance, we build these kind of four panel rays of custom lds is a super bright L, D panel. And they have a coin attached them, and you can bolt them together, which is how we created this sort of four panel.

Alright, we took that underneath this heavy lift drone. So A D, D, I match six hundred, which is, you know, ten key los heavy, about a meet to why there is a huge based. We put that up in the air, and the fifteen minute time I would start taking the lights out of their own battery source.

And they were a weak link, if you like. They ran out about fifteen minutes. At the same time, we'd send up A D J mac 3 pro and and that would be our film camera。 I said that the other kind of fun thing about filming inside the cave, right, is obviously you've got no G P S on the drains, right? G P.

S is not functional. And when you take that away from a lot of consumer drains, they freak out. They have this in bill cap, right? They only go tend me too high, so you can't do something crazy with them.

So we actually have to work with D, J, I to take those caps off for this very specific case. Didn't work with the D J. Imac free. So we had to hack IT in the cave by by doing these crazy flight stone.

So we'd worked out that if you use a topography of the k IT would buffle the drone and IT would think that IT was above or below ten meters, whatever, anyway. So we would fly over this bit of topography. IT would think as core.

I'm still within my ten meters on. Anyway, we can fly hundred meters high, which is itself because we're underground in this. what? A hundred meter plus, Kevin, right? Huge thing.

So we take our fly around with that. And and meanwhile, while we're filming with this magic, we would swing the lighting drone around in oxx, around the object that film. What I would do IT was to move the pool of light to both reveal and high certain areas of the cave. We should also enhance the shadows and and the textures of decay features. And IT was a way that we could introduce scale into the cave, and also just show this underworld, like, has never been shown before.

One cool thing, by the way, about that drone footage, and about a lot of the stuff in a cave, is that you see people in the shots of the crew members are actually, in this series, much more than in previous planet, which alexa, theo both said was a deliberate choice. They both wanted to show scale, but also to remind people that humans are part of and change every single one of these stories.

IT works really well, and actually both ways, and is pretty wild, in particular in the cave. So that's the big stuff. And then all the way in the other end of the spectrum, there are two sequences in the episodes were talking about where we actually get to see inside of a nest. One is inside a turman mount in the grassland of australia, where paris watching their eggs, and another with oriental pied horne bills burying into a tree to make a nest in bernier. One settled inside the few name does something truly bizarre SHE pulls out her flight feather's .

SHE is .

not going to eat them because he will be saying in here for quite some time. Both times are in this T, V, tiny space that is somehow well lit, shot in high resolution, and doesn't drive the animals totally insane. It's wild, and it's really hard to put together these parrots.

He's golden short of paris, like beautiful. They live in these grasslands in in northern australia that super rare. You've got to be supersensitive, right? One failed next equals a whole generation for that family, not pledging and replenishing the population.

So we had to work with the landlord, who has he loved, who has studied, who has looked after, cared for her land and these parrots for like decades. He works with his amazing scientists, Steve mercy, who allowed us to make a small hole in the back of the time. I M once the chicks I had that much more relax.

So they're feeding. They are feeding. So when the mom, that way, we need this small hole in and using using a probe lands, this lower probe lands, we are able to to get that through.

And as super wide lands, so you can you can see the whole process. But the nest is probably only need the size of, like I don't know, great food, right? So is actually pretty small. So you're getting this really inter view in.

And then of course, the lighter it's it's super important because if you if you just rely on the lighting from from the hall, just everything is really backlight and and dark and bright and it's it's awful. So you got to make another tiny hall for the tiny little little l delights that we could shine to be a creative england and lighted inside. And then we'd run a cable away to a hide.

Twenty thirty needs away and and then would be remote triggered to once it's there. I was there was all set, but we wanted to film at a different status. So we we form for a day, go you pretty much. We're got enough kind of feeling moments. We withdraw the camera.

We thought, okay, two weeks later we will come back and sticky and get the next part of the live stage, by which time, by which time that determines their own industries right over that year period time, they seal back that hole. So I, so to make the hole again, do this anyway, once we learn how to do that, the the camera, mitch decided to. But talking there, I think actually it's just just a plug which which meant the time might seal around the plugs, which was their tie and everything but IT meant like I just pop IT on, put the lens back in.

It's a super privilege. Look into these super rare parrots. And I am really pleased to say that they were fledged absolutely beautifully.

IT was more joy to see them all fly away. But I likes your story in the hole. Bell is amazing, right?

yeah. So we use a very similar set up to theres. We've actually use some the same lighting and the same lens.

So we ve sent all of that to bornier for our team in burial to use and what they have to do because it's it's such a long processes. Nesting period is very long. First of all, we had to guess which nest these home bills would use because we didn't want to disturb them.

So we chose widness. And the guys out there worked with scientists, he studying es, the hall bills. So they went out, they set up tree platforms attached to the size of the trees for the camera to go on.

And eventually, if that female chose that next hole, and then they waited for them to sort for their behavior to start happening where they could see which nest they will be choosing. And then, just like the termite mounds with theo, we drill very, very tiny holes and use this almost end of scope c lower probe to sort of film inside the nest. So we inserted, we've made a hole for that.

And then we also made, I think, three holes for lighting, because, you know, these underscored c cameras, they need a lot of lighting to get the lightening is very dark cavities. And then what we had to do is, again, the cameras were tethered and the lights were tethered. So once he decided, which next year is in, we had to wait sort of a week or so for her to settled in.

And then in the night time, while in the very early morning, they then unplugged ed the whole, which they'd plugged up with clay because obviously a living tree and you don't want to add a new bacteria anything, so use clay. And then they would gently put in the pray lens, and then they would also put in the light. And then Foster grandi, a camera Operator, would also gradually turn up the lights.

As the daylight started coming up. Theyve got quite big eyes, these birds, and they're very sensitives their surroundings. And so there were time SHE definitely muddied. She's she's expert, muddying ing up herself into this tree hole, creating this little about her to live in.

But he would then muddy up the lights and the camera IT was frustrating, but they work so delicately, and they managed to get the full behavior of her. And yes, he accepted IT eventually. And we got this, actually, the incredible, intimate view of inside the nest. You know, without that, the story wouldn't have been half as good, you know to be able to see her perspective you know almost as if she's in the and it's just yeah, I think I made for an excEllent sequence ultimately .

in talking to theo and alex IT didn't sound like there was much they couldn't do technologically speaking. It's all a lot of work and a lot of gear. IT takes forever and the show is expensive to make, but most of IT is doable still, although alex and theos said they both have some ideas about how tech could make life easier for, say, planet or four and a few years even beyond that. I think personally.

I would like the camera equipment to be a bit lighter. You know IT is getting smaller. Its actually we end up with just as much club.

Er, we have just as much here even though it's becoming smarter because you know you have this specialized bit of cable that he used for this camera but not for that camera. Do you end up with lots of stuff. So that would be nice if things actually just became a bit smaller and a bit lighter.

But then sometimes things like tripods, you need them to be heavy for that stability. But that for me, that would be great. But then for the making of IT, as there was saying earlier, having an iphone to film, that has changed, and I think that will continue changing.

Okay, I got two. One is drones with telly photo capability that will change to everything because as soon as you can start to getting stabilization good enough to get like ten times sims on plus, you know you you're starting to be able to film really, really cool behavior in A A really cinematic way to get incredible line or shot which are moving and yet compressed because you are three hundred and whatever that will be gain.

Changing the ministration drawings is a part of that as well. And that will definitely can fill at space, will be great. My rogue prediction may be up for six years, but maybe slightly longer, is utilizing space imaging more? We had a great series a few years ago called earth from space, which, which utilized a space im to get images of something happening on the ground, pretty high, super high resolution, which were then merge with drones filming that same event.

And you would have this crazy interface right from outer space downs, and you can fly effectively straight into the action from life. And IT was brilliant. IT was super cool. And I think that was way more innovative than the kind of time should allow for.

And I think that imaging from space, the more resolution you can get them, more focus, will allow us to do so much more, both in a film making perspective, also from a science counting animals, you know that super important, what they do with satellite imaging now for, like, counting penguin colonies is crazy. They looked for a shit, basically. They looked for penguin shit on the ice.

And they go out, look, there's a whole new colony that we have no idea. There is that many more penguins, or that many less penguins, and they can tell how close they are to being, like, well, wiped off by a by ice loss spacing claim. And so that kind of technology will feed into science, and IT will feed into what we do, is what our filmmakers so much more. And and i'm supervised about that and then film me .

on mos heard to hear first friends planet earth for the mars edition an alright, we have to take a break. And then we are going to come back and talk about TV algorithms and how to get recommendations right 后边 back。

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Welcome back. We're going to a stay on the theme of, like I said, how stuff appears on your television. But I want to take a look at IT in a really different way. For years, I have been trying to figure out how streaming apps are supposed to work the way they do work where you open the APP and and are presented with like a hundred million tiles of shows and movies you might like, and then you spend forever scrolling through them and never find anything to watch. And you eventually just give up and throw your TV into a river, and we've on with your life that can't possibly be the best way.

But what is the best way? A bunch? For years ago, I asked somebody that who knows what the goal was like the north star, for how they think about this? And he said he was just like a play button.

You open the APP and I should just know what you wanna watch and maybe even start playing IT for you. I'm not sure that the answer either. So what is the answer? There are in the world few people Better equipped to know the answer to that question than pat flowing.

I am a senior director, uh, product management here. So I leave the member experience P. M. team. Think of that as the group responsible for how profiles work, how the core Brown and discovery experience works, how you watch something great tonight or a something great if you playing games across IOS and android, and that's across TV devices, the website IOS and android phones and tablets.

In case accounting, that's a lot of jobs. But one of them is very much to figure out what should happen when I open the APP. Netflix is famous for all the time. IT means thinking about these recommendation systems.

Remember a bunch years ago when IT offered a million dollars to any developer that could improve the system in a meaningful way? Even now, picture the APP, there's that huge banner that shows up, when are you open netflix? And then below IT, there's all those endless rose of increasingly specific genres and what's popular and what you've watched before.

And there are a million ways, big and small, that netflix is choosing and influencing what you see and in what order. As a result, I guess, more than most companies. I found myself often sitting there wondering why netflix is showing me, what is showing me.

So that's a pat I talked about. I started by asking him that big picture question i've been asking people for years. The one that I asked that I had to all those years ago.

What is the best case scenario here when I open netflix? Is the goal to show me a million is IT. To show me three options. Three hundred options is IT to get so good at recommendations. But IT does get everything right immediately every time and starts playing the exact perfect thing that the plan that .

would be so cool. But it's really quite hard to so people have such diverse interest. It's not just that you might love sports, documentary and dramas and baking shows, for example. It's also that tonight you might be interested in watching back on, but tomorrow you might be interested watching the crown. And it's quite difficult for us to know that when you sit down on the couch.

So by definition, that hit the button on your remote and back up more, the crown starts playing like that's that's a hard that's a hard game for us to win that at very high frequency. So I think anything to say is people like to browse is not the people don't like browser, is the people don't like bad browser experiences. So if we can deliver a great discovery experience as the word we would use internally and make that browsing experience feel great, feel the right amount fast, the right amount of peeling, give you the right amount of options, then you're satisfied when you land on one that's that's perfect for you.

The other thing to know is that you might not know what you love. Let's take those those genre examples. So let's say, sam, into sports stocks and dramas. And let's say many folks who use the afflux are in the sports ducks dramas and baking shows. But so I haven't tried to baking show yet.

The beauty of personalization is it's nearly a certainty that we would then try to recommend baking shows to me because there's lots of folks out there, for whatever reason, have to share many of the same similar takes preferences. Ces idea and this one that I haven't demonstrated yet, but it's plausible that I might. And so we would make that recommendation. However, you find that, that's hard for us to do. You're just going to go for that most likely thing on any given night.

right? Yeah, I just seem like a if you were to do that, you just playing for me like this safest thing. It's like if I just booted IT up and I like you just showed me community every single time I turn on network like that, i'd haven't OK time with that, right?

If IT was just a community machine for me, like I very really going to be mad at that. But there's also no way to ever find me anything new in that world. And IT also seems like one theory I have that I can't prove because no one has ever tried that, but I hope does.

So I can see it's true is that even if you showed me the right thing, like if I was exciting, do I want to watch the cloud? Want to watch back? I think I would reflexively not want to watch whatever you showed me. There's just something about being sort of force fed that makes people not want to a do IT I kind of kind described, but that there's something that feels bad about the U I of being told what i'm going to watch even when it's the right thing.

I like that theory. I think it's very laugh. I think we probably hear that and research of time to time that giving me options and the right amount of what we will evidence, by the way, to help me make an informed decision feels more satisfying than us just pushing something to you, and that that is the truth of the members and and our is are completely alive.

We want to find you something awesome to us and also make a delightful you to get there. Simplicity of the neth lix business model is its subscription. And so towards the end of the month, if you find something, the odds are you're going na submit again tomorrow for the next month.

And so that's what we're after. And whatever a way works best for you, we want to make that happens to the point of making that decision. Feel good to use. So to your question on my well, would be Better just to have pushed the one thing.

Or do people like the choices, something you might not know, is that the way the choices are presented to you or in any particular country might be a little a difference? To take quick game, for example, we try a variety of different ways to good game to you. And so we would have different sets of static arts work slides, different and opposites, slightly different ways to promote via video.

So like a trailer, for example. And then we would try those different ways to different countries in different groups. And they would all be reflective of what squid game is about. But they would be oriented to try to find what would be best for you to understand what a particular time is about and then make a very informed decisions so that another element of the personalization, again, to help you be super satisfied, you could I play on so that we're doing our best job. We can be a matchmaker for you.

That's really interesting. So let's actually talk about game because I think the Christian, i've always had a bit netflix rate is like how something goes from sort of appearing on netflix to suddenly being everywhere. And I think we talk about IT like it's a certain kind of either accidental magic or like brute corporate force from netflix.

And I think the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. But I do think the last of a big picture of question I have, and then I want I to tell this good game story, one of the things I ve always wanted about netflix is IT. Seems to me lake are talking about being a subscription business.

All that really matters is that I find something to watch IT as long as i'm satisfied every time I go the APP everybody wins. Odds are gonna keep describing and that sounds like that's the case. So what is the upside for netflix and having these kind of cultural moment? We talk a lot about sort of the death of the like show everybody's watching. If your network do you care? As long as I am finding something I like, what is the matter if it's the same thing that everybody else is watching?

I mean, isn't IT so fun when something like quit game or wednesday, or like a papal, it's fun. Is IT required? No, probably not. That's the beauty of personalization.

So when when you open the APP, when I open the APP are going to see completely different home experiences, because we probably have completely different taste preferences. But when IT happens, that sure feels magical. And to take squid game as the example, the beginning of any of these sort of large phenomenon is phenomenon, is incredible story.

So this good game, very korean, you can define IT is violent as a commentary on society. It's funny at times. It's certainly dark.

It's exciting. It's thring. It's a game show. It's all these different things pack together, created distinctly for a career audience. So there was no illusions at the outset that, that would necessarily be a huge global hit. But what happens is that starts to play incredibly well in korea.

So we start with an audience that is likely to be quite highly qualified in terms of delivering impressions, recommending squid game for that group. And then because squid game and other netflix originals are available globally, we've got dubs and subtitles and often over the thirty languages. So in the case of squid game, for brazilian portuguese and for that, amErica and spanish started to take off and light america.

And from there, it's sort of difficult to know the causes because it's lots of things are happening outside of effect. So people started talking about squid game and this became kind of a global thing on social. And then people are searching for squid game on netflix.

And that provides us another signal to further change how are recommending good gaming from there. The fire just continues to burn in all of a sudden everywhere you're hearing about school game and you open netflix and you find that happens to be there. So that's a pretty good example of how would work, I think would probably be another example.

Our goal is not a salary to have titles like game be the one thing everyone is talking about globally. We want to make titles that are authentically local and can potentially find great audiences all around the world, and that's incredible. When they do, it's not always the case. It's more rare than not, but it's super exciting when IT does happen. okay.

So you just breathe through a bunch of, I think really interesting like personalization and discovering things. So take a quick thing, got like rewind all the way back to be get so like not the way we think the show is interesting thing like that. I get you make the show because you think it's going to be cool at the very beginning IT seems like with something like that, like I am doing this sort of from your perch, the job is to figure out like who are we confident this is going to be interesting to when you at the point nobody has seen IT, you can either or just like beat people of the head with IT and make them see IT or you can try and guess who you think is most likely to like IT and show that to them first. Is that do I think about that the right way?

Totally the right way. So like two good examples to give you on this one, one less people the game, you can go find out about titles that are going to launch on netflix, in an area, on netlist there, on mobile, across I was an android, or on T, V. You can see coming set of coming same titles.

right? And is that a popular thing? Like to people interact to that a lot .

people love watching trailers and finding out about what's whether it's with other with other services. So I say generally, yes, of I think people love to sort of anticipate what what will be fun for them next on netflix. And so you can tell us directly, i'm interested in this thing, so you literally click remind me and then we would remind you we would follow up on that obligation.

So we send you a push notification email reminder on in the APP when you open up netflix. But in addition, that gives us this very explicit signal of the kinds of members who are likely to be interested. Now it's not perfect because you could say no, remind me for you know, the next section of the crown.

But you have no intention of watching and you haven't watched the prior seasons. IT was like the next accident or like you think your partner might want to watch with you. So it's not a perfect coalition that when you hit, remind me you will definitely want to watch. Put its a pretty good signal for rust to work from.

And then we would use that to extrapolate if people like David are hitting, remind at very high rates, and people like David watch these kinds of things, we would probably expand that initial audience to reflect people like whether or not, again, people like you this on what they watch, we would then recommended. And from there, IT just builds. And the beauty, again, is that it's quite pure and that all we really care about is being a great matchmaker.

We worship at the author of customer satisfaction of rust to deliver a bad recommendation is rust to have missed out until learning you a great recommendation. So at the beginning, we know very little. And so the other example I would give you here is if you're a brand new member of netflix, we know almost nothing about you, right? We know where you are, the device, where's the phone or TV or laptop that you've signed up on.

And then all you have to do is tell us just a very little bit about your interest. So we ask you tell us a few titles that your interested in, and that is the initial Spark for personalization. We will. So okay, based on those expressed stated, stated preferences, here are the kinds of things that folks who watch those things also like, right?

And IT seems like I was really through the guidelines to the recommendation systems that are on the website. And I would like basically everything about the system is either metal data about the thing itself or your viewing activity and that there's almost nothing else that you're thinking about in that like I expected my age and zip code and ethnic and I don't know net worth whatever. Like there are million signals that we have been trained by the internet to believe our super relevant targeting to and at least from what the stuff is reading says you don't care about most of that.

That's the beauty of IT, is that our goal is just to match you with something you are going to love watching tonight. And the best input for what you might love watching tonight or tomorrow, next week, is what you've watched to spend time with before and those other signals might be but the thing that really matters is what have you demonstrated that you really interested the behavior and that sort of the beauty?

Um so yes, as you point out, you can think of titles as being broken down into these constituent components. This method is a movie, film. What's its originating country? How long is that? What languages are available and genre, perhaps some tagging about attributes of the title.

And those things all helped to sort round out what a title is like. And then you match that against member taste preferences. And I can take that sports stocks, drama, baking shows, if you watch any two of those things and lots of people watch all three of those things, that it's a pretty good chance that that third genre might be interesting to you.

And so some point in time you'll discover some genre that what wouldn't otherwise have been your consciousness and tried out on netflix. Now the thing that we also do is inject some randomness ess into these recommendations because again, to the point of tonight, when you sit down on the couch, I don't know what mujer and necessarily or who's on the couch with you and I could be just something different tonight would be Better for you. And in that case, we inject just a little bit of serendipity because we know it's quite hard, hard to get IT right every time. And that also helps continue to broaden what could be recommended to you yet.

What is the right baLance there? I think about like the great innovation of tiktok was that IT made IT really low stakes for tiktok to be wrong, which because it's so easy to score, is so easy to just fit, pass, something you don't like, the tiktok can just show you stuff. Everything in there is just pure random, and you don't really analyze IT because it's so easy to grow.

I don't think you have quite the same permission because by the time i'm like twenty minutes in the show and decide that I hate IT, that's a much bigger commitment and wanted to a few seconds on a tiktok thing. So I would think there's less room to just sort of throw something at me just on the off chance I might like IT to see how I react. How do you think about that? Like you could make the safe recommendation. You could just throw spaghetti the walls at six, but neither of those feels exactly of right for nettlewick.

We're definitely trying to not thus gate at the walks are trying to make recommendations, think about IT as where doing our best to predict what might be interesting to you based on everything that's known about your taste preferences before you open reflex tonight.

if you follow that all the way out, you just show me community every time, right?

Like and then we're not trying to help you find always have something great to watch. So so yes, a tier point like that maybe might generalize that community chAllenging for me that might be like, what could I watch? And I mean, science thought would be fun for me most nights.

right? Yeah not not a community. I just yeah or it's like, I think about the the one that happens to us all the time as we watch one trashy and I don't use that as an insult reality show, and then IT just infinite trashy reality shows, and that actually makes a lot of sense.

But at the same time, there is a finite amount of Tracy reality TV that I actually wanna watch. And so but then to just show up and be like, oh, you like trashy reality T V, would you like the great british baking show? That seems like a hard leap to make. But when you eventually kind have to make.

I think customers might say they would watch community every night. But when we as they say that a little bit of serendipity, what we find is customers more satisfied when they have a little bit more breath in terms of what they watch.

And I think if intuitively, when you run that by members and you talk to them and you ask quality of work, how does IT feel when you when even watching a great a breadth of things versus more nearly, say, on the a couple of genres, I think IT to tilly IT makes sense. I think quality titivate, you would hear that from from people as well if you just ask them. And so what we find in the data as well as that when we diversify slightly beyond your very narrow tried and true David always loves community types of recommendations.

We find that you will eventually try one or multiple. And by the way, those will be a great fit and that's sort of the fun of IT is that um especially when introducing news stories to the world like this never been something like squid game before. No one would say, oh, I was hoping I could have watch squid game to ight. But you find IT and you get into IT and you're loss with there is a handful of hours and night or more than a handful of our over the next couple of weeks. That's kind of the magic of great story telling.

yes. So that's part of the quit game, sorry. That I think is really interesting. And you are and you know it's in korea, it's doing super well. It's doing IT sounds like Better than expected even in the place.

Are you expected IT to do very well? What happens next? Like there are a meeting where somebodies like people love this show. This might be huge. We have to like, turn up the random this knob on the wall and start showing IT to more people. Like what how do you take IT from? It's doing well among the people we thought I would do well among to let's show this to people who have not necessarily shown us they would like something like this, but the earthly signals say .

that they might the the beauty of this approach to personalization is no bs, no buttons, no nothing needed to happen, vince.

There's A B can convince me there's not enough. It's the viewers not just like show this everybody .

sometimes that appears that way. But that's that's what sort sort of magical that, as I was saying in the case of squid game, is a little difficult to know for sure how much the conversation outside of method x dw of what we saw to some of the behavior. so. As soon as people started to talk about scrip game, then we start to see, as I say, some signals of increased demand that we wouldn't otherwise be able to observe.

And so meaning, like people searching .

for IT more exactly a great example that would be of people are most members at that point, probably when the english primary members of focus on the U. S, for example, wouldn't necessary had spent lots of time watching original language korean content before they were introduced to squid game.

And so IT would not necessarily have been something that would have been high up their list of, says, stated preferences, stated unexcited to watch a dark, pretty, a game show oriented throw a series from korea. But once people start talking about IT, and we started to see something again, for example, that search activity that helps them reinforce for the algorithms, that is time that maybe open up the audience a little bit. And as I say, that's automatic in nature.

There's no need for, for dials or buttons and what we're doing all the time trying to tune more generally. So we would like to always be improving the way we are making recommendations. So for example, we have a view that maybe not necessarily every day half an hour you spend on nefert's is worth the same to you as a customer. So we like to be able to learn a little bit more and be able to recommend, say, a half our episode of something that you would love tonight versus a half hour of something you would be just OK as a community for you might be a good example, like you be satisfied with community tonight, but you would love if you found something new and helping to tune in, finding that what you might love and be able to make those recommendations with precision .

after o so is there really there is no human interaction in process where like something like squid games arts? Is that one of the funny things about sick games to me? As you could look at IT at some point early in the process and think o the algorithm gone completely haywire here.

There's no way this many people in this many places want to watch this specific show that we never in million years would have put on this, particularly rejectors. And on the other hand, it's obviously like a smashing success for the system that IT essentially, i'm assuming at some point, basically told every person on planned on earth you should probably watch quick game. Everybody else is watching IT seems to like IT.

So is is there are not a moment where you is like jumping up the graph and you have to have a meeting? We're like what is happening here? Is this what's supposed to be going .

on this the beauty of IT wasn't even necessary for good game. IT became big on its own. I think suits in the U. S. Is another good example where um you maybe wouldn't necessarily expected in advance how big suits could be at this point time, and it's been huge. And so that's kind of beauty of IT where there is no need to be in the background pulling a separate lever. It's just, again, try to think about from how do we be the best possible matchmaker between all the possible options you could have on netflix and other services you might describe to and make the best, most compelling recommendations. And the easiest, most hopefully fun to the extent browsing and to watch tonight can be fun ways so that when you do settle in on what you're gona watch, you hit play and it's like, uh, this was perfect for me.

I would assume that at some point, kind of popularity begets popularity that like the bigger or something gets, the more comfortable the system gets, recommending IT more widely to people, maybe even further or out of sort of the traditional strikes on a show like that.

What I think again, take focus on again there as an example where yes of um if you're thinking about that randomness or serendipity, imagine you remember who again never watched any korean language content before. We can more confidently make that recommendation to the more popular something is, especially among folks who are also members of networks who watch similar things to so yes, I that there OK.

And is there is there any upside to having kind of human or editorial or curatorial input here? I mean, I think about like we talk a lot of the focus of music services. So we talk a lot about you, a giant carpets of stuff.

We can do some really interesting personalization. But also maybe what you wanted know is what a person you think is smart, likes, or we can recommend. I don't know, like halloween is a good example.

Ate IT was just allows. En, let's put together a thing that is like some of our favorite old school halloween movies, people of that kind of up. And if you do that in conflicts, you do IT less, obviously, than some others. Is that kind of just not something you think is is necessary or scale?

We we do from time to time do things like that where we're offering collections that are representative of the moment time. So how lowe en would be that be a very good example or other collections seasoned only. So those kinds of collections do exist on the flex, and you can either seek them out yourself or from time to time you might find them.

Those kids of recommendations promoted either on TV or other platforms. You should think of those collections are still personalizing nature. So imagine you've had, you say, hundred candidates for a some kind of a no collection. We would still want to present titles to you in a personalized, whether that's what order they would be presented in or how their position to use. As as mentioning your earlier, we've got a incredible creative production team that thinking about what are all the possible ways you could represent a title, whether that's the art where the synapse, sis or video promotional assets. And we would still want to do that in a way that positions any of those particular titles within a, say, more created seasonal sap in a way that would really hopeful ly resonate with you individually.

Yeah, one of my favor, things to do on netflix is scroll around and try to guess why the system picked that particular poster to show me for any given thing because I know there's a bunch of options. IT shows them in lots of different ways. And I saw one that was just like, I forget what movie was, was the movie in which tom cruise was like the fourth most important character in the movie. But the post of self was just tom cruise that's like, you know, I like, you're not wrong, netflix, but I wonder what is is about me as a person that I was like, you know what? David wants to watch this movie as tom crew?

You might be a huge time cruising. You might have just reveal that.

oh, it's not wrong. To be clear, it's not wrong at all, but I was yeah it's just very funny thing. And I think actually to that point, one of the things that I think has always been tRicky about personalization over the years is pairing that with transparency. Like I think there there's a an interesting thing that we found. And this is first.

So I think on social media where we have these rank fees and people like why am I being shown this thing this way in this order? And there's there's something about kind of understanding the order that is being presented to you that actually really comforting and makes people feel Better and to some, make an effect like you've done a bunch of work. IT seems like making even just like the rose are fairly self explanatory ory like us with trending, here's what's this category. But do you think about trying to sort of telegraph the reasons behind what you're showing people as you go?

I love this question because I think we've got opportunity to do Better here. So we would call all the ways that we would position and recommendation set of recommendations to evidence for why something might be to you, right? And so explaining that evidence, there's good thinking behind that, that is helpful for folks.

So why is something presented to me? So I think we ve made some good progress. They are broadly the candidate set of reasons why something could potentially be a good fit for you. So I ve had on a few of those, whether it's the art being tailor to you or the synopsis or other individual pieces of evidence, for example, the cast or other folks involved in bring that table of life.

And that might resonate with you, but I think we can do even more, which is to say make the connection between here's really specifically why we think this might be a good fit based on whatever the meaningful to you reason might be, whether it's, for example, in the time cruise case, you've binged everything we have on time cruise, and this is what we think this would be awesome for you or IT looks like you're ready to break out of your community, right? Here's what folks loves, just broken, broken at here. Time here is exactly when you want to break out the and you.

tom cruise is the south. Tell people at all the that. And I think that it's another really interesting U I question over time.

One of the things i've love talking to people about on netflix s is the thumbs up, thumbs system. I don't know if this is true. I have quiz ed rain of strangers on this in a while.

But for a long time I think the thing where I would say, you know, I would have the Green comes up and maybe like eighty nine percent match, I think most people would read that as a sort of rotten tomato score. That's like most people like this thing. That's not what IT is.

Is my understanding IT is something closer to like the likely who you're gonna like this thing. But it's just a really fascinating thing of trying to telegraph you have this information about what unlikely to like and why. And to sum extent, all of that is useful for me to see as i'm browsing because by the time I be doing this for a while, I have a fair amount of faith and neffy ibc to show me something i'm going to like.

But the more you can tell me about IT, the faster you can help me make those decisions. But a, you don't want to overwhelm people, I wouldn't think. And b IT just get confusing at some point.

There's just only so much you can show me, especially if it's like you like to become in the crown. We think you'll love the great british speaking show. People have the hello you talking about. So like I wonder even just from A U I perspective, how you think about putting that stuff in front .

people but you're absolutely write that it's you've got to to make heart trade off and that's that's a hard design chAllenge when you're constrained in the U I. And so for the many tens of possible reasons why a title could be a great fit for you. Think about this in the weeds a little bit on how someone's actually experiencing netflix when you're browsing, you've got that first glimpse of a title and you're some much more restricted.

And what can be shown you there? We want to try to present the evidence that is most compelling individually for you. Imagine, again, there are tens of possible option, say we've want to hopefully think about how we might rank those and then present the ones that are most compelling initially, which would then generate a little bit more interest you.

And if you one level deeper and that discovery journey revealed a little bit more, that would then be helpful. So as you're, for example, watching a trailer, you might learn a little more about the title despite watching. But there maybe also additional longer forgn soppose evidence.

There are a little bit more on the cast or a little bit more on why this title is similar, others you've watched, why that might be a compelling match. So it's for sure a hard chAllenge. IT tends to be great dividends for members to know more because they're excited to know about all. Why would this be a good fit for me? And the way in manifest us is hopefully we observe that Better matches between our recommendations of what ultimately it's played and then ultimately higher member satisfaction.

Got IT. okay. So again, with not to keep coming back to the quick game, but with something like swick game, how do you tell that story to people? Do you eventually just turn IT around? And it's like just everybodys watching this, like shot up, hit play. Everybody's watching .

this show on that one is gets a good example of the robot in the art became particularly compelling and sure, visually interesting. I think there's just something about that, that was intrigued folks. And then for sure, popularity plays a role there.

So as something gets bigger and bigger and it's, for example, at the top ten list, also your friends are talking about IT, that social proof is often super compelling. And again, that's happening. We don't want to take too much credit in the flakes that happening outside with your friends. When you're on a run, on a walk on social media, you're hearing about things. And so that's happening just as much, if not more often, netflix, in the biggest versions of success when something is really blowing up.

Yeah, where do you see signals of that? And you mentioned searches increasing, but also this elusive sort of sense of buzz is a very hard thing to quantify. But if you can becomes really useful.

So like how do you especially in that sort of growth moment before I show like squid game or wedding day or whatever kind of takes over the world, what do you look at as those moments that like somebody is telling me on a run that I should go watch this show, like you, you, anna, capture that. And I, in the best case in area would be when I go sit down on my couch there IT is the thing that my friend is, recommend to me. right? how? How do you bridge those two things you .

should think of those? Those things like super indirect, right? And so that I mentioned a couple ways that would manifest the first before something launches.

That would be, you come the netho x, and maybe in the case before. So good game watches. I heard I, someone told me about this.

You search for them, then you get to watch the trailer advances and you find out available yet. You could remind me that same would be true on something like the that flex cut next week, not available yet. You can learn little bit if you open the APP and you hit, remind me.

So that's one indirect way. And the other one would be search. And that tends to be great a indicating what people are excited about. The great thing about the search results experience is also personalized and will continue to improve over time as behavior indicates what are the right responses to particular query.

So at the outside, for example, when someone first searches for sweet game, maybe the results would not have squid game in precisely the first result position. But over time, we would learn as people are playing school game after the type S Q and then immediately it's played at very high rates than we would change those. Um the ordering of those recommendations in search results and of match you very quickly with the thing that you actually haven't hand for got .

OK one of the smartest things I think netflix is done is that when you search for something that isn't on netflix, IT tries to recommend you things like that thing, which is just the the most like subtle, devious stroke of genius. It's great. It's like we don't have this movie.

Don't worry about that. Watch these other movies and I suspect that works. It's worked for me many times where it's like IT picked something spiritually close enough that i'm like a OK. I've been meaning to watch that anyway, I had not really thought of search results as a discovery engine, but IT kind of is one very .

meaningful discovery source of discovery. And you're write that he can be frustrating if you're searching for that thing that is either not available yet or isn't available on new flex in your country. And we still really want to help you have an incredible nate tonight with netflix. And so hopefully, we've got something, if not exactly bad thing.

that be a good fit. What do you call the thing at the top? The super big thing was IT. Like the hero is at the markey, what you call IT.

we call IT. Internally, the billboard, the bill board OK .

the socks about the billboard. The theory I hear about the bill board most often is that aid is an unbelievably powerful piece of streaming, real state that whatever you put there, a lot of people are going to interact with in some way they perform. And that be, that is where netflix brute forces things to be popular by force feeding IT too, one hundred million people whenever IT feels like IT, just because he wants to make a show popular. I have questions about both parts of that, but started at the beginning. Is that as powerful of piece of screen realist as IT seems like IT might be that whatever you put there is going to be more noticed by people.

certainly meaningful. But if you think about how members are spending time with netflix there, coming in with something in mind and going to search or they have a category, mya, it's a film or a genre or this is the kind of mood i'm in tonight. So it's one of the ways that folks do fine what they want to watch.

I won't desert. It's important is the first thing you see after you select your profile is that the most important? There's lots of ways folks are expressing what they need to watch watching tonight.

okay. And do you think this is a total aside? He gets my second question in the second, but I think the way you just describe that is really interesting because it's sort of assumes people come in with like one data point about what they are looking for, which sort of makes sense.

But also, I can imagine there's a set of people out there who just open netflix. I think this is the unique thing about fix at this point is that you're big enough to essentially just be the thing, and i'm just gonna en IT and see what happens. Does that behavior existence? You have to treat those people differently, who since tirely have no idea what they want.

They just want to watch something that would be nevada for us, where here you're so confident that we're gonna both options and make great recommendation among those options that when you want to relax and you're ready to watch or play something that you think of us forest. And so you sit down on the couch and you just hit the netflix button on your remote because you're so confident you're gna find something great on netflix.

You are completely right that there's this spectrum where some nights you know exactly what you're excited about. So when you're right in the middle of the newest season of, for example, for me right now at the crown watching in our internal employee preview and I like I am so excited to I to them on the watch the next episode. So that's gonna more likely i'm going to continue watching something as supposed to be looking for something new.

And then there's lots of nights where folks at down and they have no idea and they just want to find something great and they're willing to sit down and go on a discovery journey. And that's the fun, quite chAllenging problem we have is how do we make that the right amount fund serendipity, but also efficient so that IT doesn't feel like i'm slogging through. And so we want to go from experience that can at times feel overwhelming to an experience that feels most of the time, incredibly delightful, so that when you do finally land on the thing that's a perfect fit for you, you look back on that discovery journey.

and I felt great. Is that a thing you can design in real time that, like, if I open up the APP and I score past, continue watching and i'm now five deep, you can suddenly like assume that i'm on a more open end of discovery experience and show me different stuff. Like is that can you be that sort of responsive to what people are doing? Even like button click to button click.

we're humble and we we know we can always do Better on that front. But I think you make a good you know, your hunch stairs is probably a good one where if you're completely in the mode for the thing that you were watching last night and ready to watch the next episode, then it's pretty good chance y microstrip gh to. But you skip over IT and you will start to demonstrate interest more broadly than that.

A job we want to do much Better is be able to pick up on what you might in the mood for tonight more quickly and adapt our recommendations accordingly. Frighten the moment so that like if you're seems like her tonight might be a movie night for David, and based on his browser right now might be a time crew movie night, we want to accordingly adjust and make IT easy for you to then satisfy that interest. And you might not have known that before before he showed up, but that might have, as you sort of browser is like that. This is, this is a time cree's .

movie night for me. I really like the idea that I spent browsing netflix s like the weirder the recommendations would start to get that it's eventually just like, I don't know, just watch this. You clearly don't know what you want.

We don't know what you want. Like, here's some stuff. Let's see what that happens.

I enjoy that the magic would be the longer that you spend, the Better that, that final recommendation would be because we would then have know so much more about the things you could have been. Might not interesting. So one thing that a little more chAllenging is extracting, say, negative feedback from you. So I would be nice dress to know if a little bit more precision when you over something where if you spend a little bit of time with a trailer and you say that's not for me tonight, sometimes that's a little more chAllenging for us to know precisely in the moment. And that's the area where we want to spend a little more time.

That's interesting. The question of like is this something that's not to me, or just not what I want to watch tonight, but like, show this to me again in a few days kind of thing?

Exactly what a fun, hard problem was like is very difficult to necessarily parts. I never want to see this again. So FM down means, please never show this thing to me again or yeah OK.

The second question is, I think overarching theory about the bill board is that that is where netflix like flexes its originals and says, we spend a bunch money on this show. You're gona watch IT. So we're gonna show IT to you every time you open the APP, whether you want to or not. Here IT is what IT we demand. Is that how works?

IT follows the same approaches that we've been talking about for, for the last forty minutes or so. Personalize to you. We want to are our goals every time you open the APP on a with something compelling and whether that's netflix original or not, something we license from a studio supplier doesn't matter to us at all. We want you to be incredibly satisfied.

I really want to believe you. I really earnestly want to believe you, but I can also see a bunch of really good reasons that would be the other way, right? Like IT makes sense for netflix as a service to prioritize the stuff that IT owns for a lot of reasons that it's not going to leave the service anytime soon.

You have control of the IP. You can do all kinds of stuff with more popular shows that you make them something that you ve licensed somebody else. Also, there are costs associated with these things, and you want to recruit the costs.

And you made them because you think people are going to like them, so you want to put them in front of people. So I guess, why not put some of that in there? Like are there is there an internal baLance that you have to strike in how to get that suffer even if you're not showing IT to people?

If you you can come back to our business model. The nice thing as we have really good aligned here. So with the subscription business model, you've got a choice every month and the trade is your harder money for incredible entertainment every month. And so our r and the bargain is match you up with hopefully something great among an increasingly broad catalogue. And so if we have a choice between something that's less good for you, but is a netflix original or something that is Better for you, not an netlist original, we're going na take that Better for you every single time because our goal is for you to be incredibly satisfied and that be entertained. And so in any given night, if that's less likely to be an effort original based on what you like to watch, what you can move for tonight, that's okay with us.

So do you think the people who feel like they're being sort of you bludger over the head with squid game or whatever else, is that mostly due to like having a hard time reading those negative signals where it's like, okay, you skipped pass this. Is that because you hate IT and never want to see you again or just because it's not wear in the mood for right now? Like as IT as you get Better at understanding what people are doing, sort of click to click, do you think people will feel less and less of that sense of like this thing is here every time I open the APP, even though I don't want to watch IT.

some I could be popularity oriented. You mentioned earlier yourself something is quite popular and it's not for you. Then you might see that in something like the top ten list, which is quite literally, what are the series and films in your country that are the top ten?

I think it's finally understandable. yes. So those sorts of popularity signals can be hard to get around.

I think as I mentioned earlier, I think we have more to do on incorporating both more major and then that more modest. I get the feedback like please don't recommend this to me anymore. And so I think more we can do there for sure.

are I have two more questions for you. One question people ask a lot about kind of anything that is algorithm m curated like this is how do I exert some control over IT, right? I think like I I wanna teach netflix what I like and don't like. And I think i'm assuming the first thing you're going to say is like watched, if you like, which fair enough, but what else do you look at a sort of strong like actual user action signals that can push netflix in the direction of stuff that they like?

Let us know when you really love in the best way you can do that is when you really love IT, give a two thumbs. When you love IT, give you the thumbs. And if you didn't like IT, that's okay.

Let us know. Give you the thumbs. So that's one very concrete way.

I would think the thumbs down is a very strong .

signal that is generally strong signal. But that's okay. I said we like to hear because that then helps us know what resonated versus what didn't.

So that's probably the best place to do IT. And then generally speaking, we don't want to force effort on members. We want to make IT effortless for you to both find something to watch and then enjoy watching.

And so that's have an incredible discovery experience, haven't playback experience that never rebuffs and how this feels wonderful and makes IT easy for you to turn on subs for a ninety you want subs on and have hofus ly magically know that for this particular language and content type combination, you would never want sub service. So we wouldn't automatically do that. But that's IT literally just watched as you, as you guess, watch things that you like and then give us the feedback. And the best way you can do that sums up thugs .

down or double comes up OK. Why not give people tones more tools to show you what they do and don't like? I know there's the I don't know if you still do IT. I haven't signed up for a netflix in a long time. But the thing where you would sort solve the cold start problem by saying, just like great, a few things that here here, some things do you like these or not and that's a decent way of the cold start problem. But if you know there are a lot of tools for you can like, make lists, and some people have sort of stolen in the tinder mechanic, like right and left sweeping stuff you like and don't like, why not give people access to a sort of all that kind of stuff that is just like tell us everything you want to tell us about what you like so that we can tune IT for you.

We still do that task tuning. When you first sign up for netflix, you tell us a little bit about a handful of series or films that you like so that we can do little bit Better with that cold start problem. And kitchen started with good recommendations.

I think it's a fair question. Could from time to time you be asked to may be retune every now then and members might have an interest that so that there's we've tried things like that in the past. We don't have anything running right now or does exactly that.

But you could imagine, for example, if you've got A A list of titles you watched and you want to provide ratings on those titles, and that might be away for us to improve your recommendations even more. So we get that explicit feedback. So if you've got a cue of ten things you've finished the last handful of months, why wouldn't we ask you a little bit more directly? Give us the thugs up, thugs down.

So so possible. Nothing on the horizon there. precisely. But I like the idea.

Okay, enough. And then the last thing I cares about is how specifically IT is useful to personally like we talk about personalization, but there's all spectrum things that that means. So like when you think about nefarious personalization, is that to me, David?

Is that to my house? Is that to people like me? Is that to I don't know there are million people in the cohort that I am part of like how specific is even sort of useful and valuable to go as you're thinking about this stuff?

Incredibly individual. So it's to your profiles. So if you've got multiple profiles set up on your new flix account, each of those files is has an individually tailor set of recommendations.

And if you're not doing things like demographics and all that stuff, they should have essentially nothing to do with each other.

All we know about each of those profiles is literally the pattern of of watching or a game playing. And that is the the only input and the period input that we can take to that make the next grape hopefully recommended for you.

Got IT. okay. So you I mean, and that wants me all the way back to, like how much data is IT useful to have part of this, because I think I don't know. Presumably there are things you could know about me as a person that might make some of the Better. But then I guess that the scale you're working out like that, that eventually becomes untenable to try and like individually identify every single person based on like their eye color and .

what that might mean we'd like quite honestly, we ve got more than we can handle, more ideas than we can handle with just how members are using the flicks today, just by revealing their taste preferences best on among the recommendations we show, what do you try? What do not finish? What do you finish? All later comment, what do you finish quickly? As I was mentioned earlier, if there ways for us to have a little bit Better sense for what you love, diverse s you just like, so one way you could tell us that would be two thugs up versus one of the that more frequently, for example. But if there might be other ways where we can extract a little more signal with respect to time, even Better spend in time, your super thrilled to have spent with netflix that those would be great ways for us to continue to enrich the way we improve our recommendations for you got IT.

Okay, right? This is my actual last question. I swear that the three times, this is my actual last question.

Tell me about thumbs versus stars. I find this totally fascine. And I think you've been at netflix long enough to have seen both sides.

So I will just lay my car in the table. I think five star scales, are these stupid staying on the internet? And I think they essentially mean nothing. But i'm curious about how you think about like the one thumb, two thumbs ums down thing verses of five star recommendation and why the sums works.

That thumbs is a simple way for you to provide feedback on whether you like something or didn't like something. The trick on stars and sounds like you're not the stars camps that enough to persuade you the trick on stars. Sometimes you might write something very highly on the stars because that's how something you think something ought to be perceived. So it's critically claimed and and so you feel like you deserves many stars as opposed to how did you actually feel about IT and that's what's more meaningful to improve your recommendations is the reflection of how you actually felt about something and whether IT was good for you. And so thus have the benefit of one being simpler and to hopefully being a Better reflection of what you actually love or didn't love about what you're watching on ethics.

That's interesting. That's actually a more like emotional answer than I was expected. Because I think to me, the problem is always that if I like something, do I give IT five stars or four stars of three stars? Literally no one knows, and everybody has different ideas.

You end up with a certain ally meaningful scale. So i've always like the thumbs up, thumbs down because did I like this or not? Is a much easier to answer, I think. But you're describing something really different where it's like I we want you to tell us how you feel not is this good and that's actually like a really different thing.

Is that good for you? I mean, that's the response that we would like. And so that's the benefit of the simple two thugs up. One sum up or want them down is that it's pretty clear to most people what what does that mean to you?

I love IT, right? I promise that was my last question, so I will let you go. But thank you for them.

This is really fun. I really appreciated. Very fun. David. Great to spend the time with you, and I look forward kitchen up against you.

All right? We got to take one more break and then we're going to get to the hot line. We'll be right back.

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We're back. Let's take a question from the verge cast hot line. As a reminder, you can always email a verge cast at the verge dot com or call eight, six, six verge one one to reach us.

We try to answer at least one question on the show every wednesday. Thank you. As always, to everybody who calls and emails is so fun. Oh, and speaking of which, we're actually planning to do in all hot line episode week, all about buying advice specifically.

So if you're trying to figure out what to buy this holiday season or you're deciding between two things or you want to talk to me about monitors, get all your questions in. Now we're going to take as many as we can next week. This week, though, no buying advice.

Instead, we have a super fund, super monkey question that we got in the verge cast email, and I have the world's two foremost experts here with me to answer. IT Helen have lack is the vergers publisher and new IP tel is our ether and chief between them, they run everything Helen have lack. Welcome to the verge cast.

Thank you.

Excited to bigger new. I tell you here to hi new. I hi, let's you know, I dial my enthusiasm based on how excited I am for the guest.

Okay, this question is kind of long so bare with me, but then we have a bunch of stuff to dive into here. The question comes from Anthony. And here's the excess.

I feel like the effects music streaming has had on income for artists is fairly well defined, or at least Better known. But as an avid reader of various journalists and publications such as yourselves, I have similar questions about journalism on the internet. Maybe supporting journalism isn't talked about as much because the overwhelming rise in news consumption on social media platforms.

But for those of us who try to consume news from dedicated aggregators like apple news, flyball at sea, I find myself asking, what are those platforms do for journalist leadership and pay for new perspective? It's a good baLance between the convenience of a single source for all my news and interests, but also intentional about seeking news, and not just in Green filtering menu's based on my legs. For example, is there a significant difference in how well a verge article does when I read IT from flip board? Instead of going to site directly, some of these aggregators filter out ads.

So that has to have an effect on the money the verge makes, right? I also wonder if there's a cost benefit of having articles available on those aggregators because that expands leadership again in an age where fewer people are seeking out news and just possibly consuming IT social media. So the question of other oil, this all the way down is basically, how does a website like the verge think about where you read our stuff and what that means to us as a publication that a fair summary of of all of that would?

Do you say, yeah.

I think so. And maybe also, how does our publication make money and support the work we make?

True, two good questions. okay. So if I understand this correctly, you to have thought about this and talked about this everyday, forever for all of your adult lives, and why do you started at this? From a sort of business perspective, obviously, is a thing. We think about a lot where our stuff is, who we work with, how we distribute things versus people coming to the site. Is there a good sort of simple rubrics of how you think about all of that?

Yeah, absolutely. I think IT helps to start with the basic of how does the verge make money. The versions are free website. So the single most important way we make money today is advertising. We also make money from other things like a file commerce on our excEllent product views.

If people subscribed to our paid newsletters like command line and hot pod, if people become loyal subtribes to things like this, our podcast, but if IT of nuance on that ads, business ads, are worth the most if you serve them inside your own add technology. We serve many of our ads in fox media at technology concert. And i'll also say a loyal reader who comes back many times is worth a lot more than someone who have just comes by once via search.

For example, to use the music metaphor from this question, someone who consistently buys your entire album and then lines up for tickets to your concert and buys your merge, that person is worth a lot more money to you than someone who listens to your hit single on the radio or a spotify playlist. It's kind of the same for a news publisher, where the single most valuable thing to a news publisher is a loyal reader who comes back over and over again, no matter what kind of business you run, is an advertising business of scriptures business. So the kind of like guiding nor star of this conversation is okay. To what extent to platforms help us build that loyal leadership?

Ah me like this is something new and I talk a lot about right like in just sort of data day coverage. Ge, this question of like what's the trade off of sort of trying to be everywhere that people are understanding that the world in which we live is not when where people like spend a lot of time typing us into desktop rose bars and all that versus like we want the website to be the thing, kind of even more so with this redesign we did a year ago. Like how do you sort that out in your head at this point?

So I do think about the solid. Our entire redesign is basically a response to this. And it's why I, lord David, back to the verge.

Because if you look at most publishers on the interact, they just give their stuff ff away all the time you like. Here's what we do people type and then we give their words away to other people's apps and hopefully you'll pay us. And that hopefully is a huge problem, right? Because he just never come true for anyone.

And then you look at their websites, the products they actually make, and it's just a multination of other people's software. Other people's ad software are very commonly google and facebook and other people's add software or the people is tracking software very commonly. Other people's video players just glowing up pages in your k why would anybody come back to this?

Why would anybody choose to have this experience? Of course, they're gone to go to flip board apple news or google, discover any these other platforms where you're giving yourself away for pennies on the dollar. And of course, that is a doom loop for the media in the music industry and the movie industry have figured this out.

And they figured that out because they have a collective leverages, right there. Only so many big labels are only so many big studios. They figured out in different ways.

The studios funded spotify basically. And they have a tremendous ment of leveraged over spotify. A tailor, wift is writing letters, the wall street journal, about streaming rates.

You know, five or six years ago, the studios just built their own apps. They are like week screw IT. We're going away from networks, are built their own apps.

And that pendulum the swing back and forth, and i'm not sure that they have wait on the right conclusion. But then you look at the news industry, no one's tried any of IT. It's it's just been giving suffer away.

Left, right? Very few publishers have stood up. And so we need to make a product to compete on the merits for user experience, to actually capture attention.

The new york times has been a good job with this, ever recognized that. But we cannot live in a world where the new york times makes news and everyone else reacts to the new york times. I think that is an unhealthy place to be.

So how long? I ve done a lot of time thinking about one. We do have a loyal audience.

The verge audience is our great asset. Very few publishers have an audience that we do. okay? We have to build that audience a product that is worth coming back to you several times a day so that even if you encounter us on all the other platforms that we contribute, we can make an offer to you that come into us directly is a Better and more rewarding experience for you. The consumer revenues, not just for us, the collector of revenue.

I'll get a little technical though. We do participate in a lot of news readers, and there are two kinds of news readers. And then he is helpful to understand the difference between the two in terms of how we think about them driving our business.

So one kind of news reader is basically in R S. feed. We give them an r feed.

IT runs on their platform. If someone clicks to read that article, what they get is a verge page. They get a verge page with verge advertising, a virt commerce links and all of that.

And ideally, what we're doing with that is either someone is hiding that page and they are deciding to read more verge content in that news reader. And I think this audience question proves you can have a loyal verge reader who primarily reads us somewhere like football. That is possible.

That's valid. That's still pretty good for business. There is a second kind of news reader. And you know, I think we've talked probably quite a lot on the verge cast about google lamp or the now defined facebook instant articles, which rather than giving people content, is an R S S. Feed which serves your own page.

You would put your content in some proprietary code format that that is native to that platform. And the promise of that was okay. You're onna make less money, period le, maybe because you don't have your fancy add formats, all of the rest.

But the product that then runs natively in facebook is going to loads so fast. And it's going to be such a great experience that the kind of volume you will get by participating there will make up for a lost revenue that in particular turned out not to be a great business to be in. For example, many publishers got way too dependent on facebook call IT circle twenty sixteen, the height of facebook traffic.

Everyone was serving instant articles, everyone was gaming the algorithm, and then facebook decided basically to shift the algorithm, prioritize family and friends content d, prioritize news content. And a lot of publishers straight up died, like went out of business, died. So that kind of dependence on a single platform to mediate your audience relationship, that is super dangerous.

And that is part of why as we evaluate, you know, what readers do we want to beyond? I think a good rubrics is one, does that send people back to war website or let us create a loyal relationship with that person inside that APP? And if not, IT Better have some other kind of value for us.

Here were primarily talking about the text content, but we also make things like video and tiktok. A good analogy for the purpose of that platforms. A little bit different. I think about tiktok is primarily a marketing platform, a marketing platform to bring the verge content and brand to Younger audiences and initiate them to the virtually. And so IT is valid to approach platforms from different perspectives. But I would say IT either Better convert on loyalty or Better have a really different value for us or it's not gonna be somewhere we're gonna want to participate.

That tiktok thing is really interesting because if you a big tiktok channel in your creator, people come to you and say, hey, helpme saw my product, like, do some ads for us. Do we have a big tiktok channel? But we should be saying is, hey, visit our website where we make money because we can't really do the advertising the creators can do on tiktok because we have this irritating wall between journalists and sales creators don't.

So that whole platform is built on like integrated advertising with the content. And that's fine. More power to the people doing network that some what we do because we are very precious about making journalism.

So our product that we have to sell our website, right? You're washington. These tech talks, you like our people can find us on our on our platform.

Our platform had Better be good enough to convert, right, if our product isn't any good. And we're saying, come to our website that is loaded up with junky ads and scs fam. The whole premise of doing tiktok falls apart so that I think there's a forcing function.

Okay, we're going to do tiktok in real and youtube and all these other things. But underneath that, there had Better be a product that's really worth IT that we are marketing the same way that anybody would go. Any other creator in market product.

right? A what you're describing in funny way is not that different from what a lot of the folks who are building paywall around stuff say, right, which is the essentially little lines incentives we want you to engage with our product and we want you to support us directly. And what we're saying instead of give us money for a subscription is like come hang out on our platform.

And that is like ultimately, that is how we win and how you win because it'll makes us give you the best experience. And like that's a good alignment of incentives. IT seems like everybody wins if we get there.

But I do there is one more thing I want to talk about, which is the like netflix for news kind of thing that has come and gone at various times. Uh, apple news is probably the most obvious version of that right now. But there are others where it's like give us some money, take all the news, we'll figure out how to split the revenue. Is that a real thing that's gonna work for anybody? Helen.

what's interesting to see what apple is doing, if you are in apple news today, as someone who does not pay for apple news plus, what will you will find is that apple is doing an awful lot of work to promote the apple news plus subscription. And that seems to be their primary focus because historically, apple is not that great at advertising.

And so apple news is an interesting one because the business model there is a little bit different than the promise of just ads can make IT. And what they seem to be doing is going after a subscription bundle, which your netflix metaphor they accurately describes. And then in that, you know, if you is a publisher can have a good piece of that, that's a good business to be in. It's tRicky if you aren't ads supported publish to figure out how to effectively participating apple news make that work.

To be clear, I think all these networks for news ideas are gna run into the same exact trap is the music industry and IT. Maybe this is a good play end because we started with a direct comparison to the music industry. The music labels are doing great.

Artists are not. The music labels have a big share of spotify. They own a big percentage. So I fy, they can negotiate rates as collectives.

Their job is to basically turn artists up, being out through the system, right? What is the shelf life of jack are home, who knows? But that the music industry is good at finding the next jack hello and spamming montier fees.

That's great even. And that is the history of music history. I'm not even making a judgement there. That is just the whole history of the music history the news industry doesn't have any of the protections, doesn't have any other cultural relevance of the music industry.

If the verge decided to pull a metallic and start seeing every tiktok creator that read one of our articles to camera for copyright and for this is a disaster, no one can do this. So we're just in this less strong position. Is people who make text, then the music or me, movies, industries are.

There's no content I D for text. There's no sense that reading an article out loud should pay us whether everybody knows if you make a famous cover of a famous song, the song, I should get paid. None of that is there. None of IT exists. So we have to come up with something else.

And then on top of that, you add these aggregators to the mix and it's obvious, are going to extract more value than they payback to the publishers because that's what they have done in music, that's what they have done in movies. And again, it's the middleman are great, the record label s are doing great. And maybe some of these big holmen companies will do great.

But the idea that you're going na get a famous writer or a famous journalist or a famous author for an aggregation platform that is like well compensated and feels like a star, I don't think that's remotely possible. I think the economics of that are totally start against the deck. I think all of these platforms would prefer to deal with an infinite supply of Young individuals, then companies that might exert leverage.

And I think that alignment miss match, like he said, David is so real. Every millennial media company, let's call them bus fee device, whatever our own, all thought that they would become. These, like institutional brands and facebooks of the world would pay carriage fees, like the cable companies paid E, S. P. And carriage fees because their brands are so strong and people would want them.

And with the platform segar t out, as I don't need to do that if there's always another twenty two year old creator on the on the come up and you can pay everyone the same rates and all the creators figured out there is no money in the platforms and they need to go start telling energy drinks and sneakers, which is exactly what. And so like stuck in the medal is like, how do you pay for the news, right? Like maybe wish to tell Parker to start selling energy during since nearly we've already got great t shirt.

But like most publishers are not individual brands like this that can just hack a product to you, and they probably shouldn't be. So how I runs a business SHE just be nicer than I do about the platforms. I just see this syndics in a very clear way for us, which is that we want to make the journalism we want to make.

We want to hold power to account. We want to do the reporting. We want all the stuff when I have fun on our website, and not right for algorithms, but inside right for audience.

We have to build a business that is independent of these platforms, especially is especially we are for us because we cover the platforms. You know how weird that would be if we had an existential financial dependency? And meta, I just think like we have to build something else over here.

And so it's great. You should go read us. Everyone on the question is like, how do we make money? We're on these places because we want to find our people there. And these elephants are good at matching us with audiences sometimes. But once you're there and if you really like us, the thing to do to support us right now is come to our website three times today. And the thing to do in the future is like pay for command line and take our survey about what other paid products because that's going to help us continue to be independent and honestly make IT easier for us to go report in the platforms without the like existent al thread that we're going to like piss off Marks of parties. When I turn off traffic to zero, which has happened to many publishers many times over the past few years.

because I am the money, I will say you do not need to feel guilty for reading the verge on flip board podcasting. What all of you are listening to right now, you are listening to and someone else APP that we happen to distribute with our own advertising. And that's a great business. So there are a lot of these news readers where we can have loyal readers who are following the verge, reading us, reading our page experience with our advertising. IT is a great business to be in.

But as I says, the primary place we need to go is to have that direct audience relationship, not to be too dependent on any one platform or algorithm, and to offer things on our website that you won't get anywhere else, notably quick post our live streams, none of that ghost to any of these distributed publisher. So if you want to hear like alex heat and realized real time reporting on open eye last week, you wouldn't get that if you were just reading us in footboard. You would not only get that if you were on the verge dot com looking at our home page, looking at the storyteller, the drama going down. And so that is a big part of IT is yeah what what can we offer in the website that you can't cut anywhere else I like?

So as always, the answer is download every episode of the verge cast six year, seventy times and everything. You'll be fine. Uh, awesome.

Thank you. Both appreciated the virtues I come. It's a good website.

You should read that the only website left.

All right, the tip for the verge cast today. Thank you to everyone who's on the show. And thank you, as always, for listening. There is, as always, locked more on everything that we talked about at the verge 到 com。 Go watch planet earth will put some links into the show notes and you know, read the verse I come there's a lot going on, even when OpenAI chaos isn't happening every minute of every day.

And as always, if you have thoughts, questions, feelings, or just please want to tell me which monitor by you can always emailed at verge, cast at the verge that com, or keep calling the hotline eight, six, six, verge, one one I love hearing from you and we're going to do that episode all about mine device next week to get your questions now. This show is produced by inertial and lame James verge cast is verge production and part of the box media podcast network me I alexie will be back on friday to talk more about what's going on an OpenAI because that just won't happening plus A I sports reporters, amazon computers and lots more. We'll see then ck.

Support for this episode comes from A W S. A W S, generate A A I gives you the tools to power your business forward with the security and speed of the world's most experienced cloud. Hey, it's lee. From decoder with new ipad talk, we spend a lot of time talking about some of the most important people in taking business about what they're putting resources to and why they think it's so critical for the future. That's why we're doing this special series diving into some of the most unique ways companies are spending money today.

For instance, what does that mean to start buying and using A I at work? How much is that costing companies? What products are they buy? And most importantly, what are they doing with IT and of course, podcasts? Yes, the thing you listening to you right now, well, it's increasingly being produced directly by companies like venture capital firms, investment funds and new crop of creators who one day want to be investors themselves.

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