A collection of videos about Netflix
Netflix explained
3:28From offering an internet-based, mail-order Blockbuster alternative, to its eventual status as a market leader in streaming entertainment. Netflix has led nearly every major paradigm shift in the television and movie business ever since, up to and including its status as the dominant streaming platform today. Curious about how Netflix got its start? 1440 has the breakdown.
Relevant articles, podcasts, videos, and more from around the internet — curated and summarized by our team
Tim Ferriss
Netflix, for much of its first two decades, was very much an extension of the management philosophies of cofounder Reed Hastings. Radical candor, agility, and a hands-off approach to high-performing employees helped Netflix grow to become the biggest streaming service in the world. Hastings—who stepped down as CEO in 2023, but remains Netflix’s chairman—shares his management insights in this podcast interview.
Some of the most consequential business stories of the modern era involve intense rivalries. In this season of Wondery’s podcast Business Wars, the focus is on the competition between Netflix and Blockbuster. It was the story of an agile upstart versus an entrenched incumbent, and this nine-part series explores the key strategies and pivotal moments in the rivalry that upended the entertainment business, setting the stage for the streaming wars.
In 2006, Netflix launched an open competition for data science teams to create approaches that would best their own recommendation algorithm, offering $1M to the winners. Three years later, the prize was awarded after a group of competitors merged, developing a solution that beat Netflix's internal algorithm by more than 10%. Go inside the race that changed not only streaming entertainment, but how internet giants interact with their customers.
With almost 270 million paying users, Netflix is the dominant force in streaming entertainment. But after enjoying a first-mover advantage for years, competitors are beginning to catch up. Most notable is Amazon, which leverages its Prime subscriptions to bundle Prime Video, and has amassed an estimated 200 million users. See an updated tracker of the world's biggest platforms by audience.
Anne Aaron, Netflix’s senior encoding tech director, has spent over a decade improving how Netflix streams its content. Then along came the challenges associated with live events. Netflix has experimented with live content like standup comedy and sporting events. In this interview with The Verge, Aaron walks through the associated technical and coding challenges.
Not every Netflix original TV show follows the same pattern. The streamer has experimented, for example, with different release schedules, such as releasing episodes in two tranches rather than dumping everything all at once. Its reality series often release episodes weekly. And then there’s a creative outlier like 'Kaleidoscope,' a crime drama with episodes that can be watched in any order.
Search and uncover even more interesting information in our vast database of curated Netflix resources