Recommended Viewing on Netflix

Back in May, I wrote and posted a piece about the success of Netflix and how I was enjoying their service, particularly the instant streaming movies, to the point of canceling all of my premium cable movie channels. The company recently announced very strong Q2 earnings, while Blockbuster Video continues to sink, but rather than revisiting the same old story, I am relaying some shrewd insight into one of Netflix' key methodologies, provided by a networking acquaintance with expertise in analytics.

Although most of my Netflix viewing selections have been either acclaimed/popular films I missed in theaters or those recommended through a Film Discussion Meetup I attend each month, one of the things that makes Netflix well-beloved by many is its recommendations based on one's past viewing habits and personal movie ratings.

As some have noted, Netflix can seem amazingly accurate in predicting what its users might like to watch and what they will enjoy. This prescience is no accident, nor is it merely based on suggesting movies with similar themes, directors or actors.

Recently, an associate of mine named Meta Brown, whose experience & expertise is in the field of analytics (and the marketing thereof), put together a very informative video about how Netflix offers up customized and largely on-target viewing selections to each of its millions of users. With her permission, I have posted Meta's video below and those interested are welcome to connect through her LinkedIn page or the contact information provided in the video itself.

And next time Netflix recommends you watch movies as seemingly disparate as Citizen Kane, National Lampoon's Vacation and The Blind Side, you'll at least have some idea as to why. 

125,000,000 Facebook Users Can't Be Wrong (at least not all of them)

I came across a few interesting stories and statistics about Facebook usage today.

The first, published by eMarketer, notes how people of different ages and ethnicities vary in their frequency of Facebook use. While it's not surprising to learn that people from 18-34 spend the most time on the site--in average number of hours per week and in the percentage on Facebook of total weekly time online--it was a bit eye opening to me that Facebook users over age 55 spend more than 4-1/2 hours per week on site.

The same article also reveals that of U.S. internet users, Asians spend the most time on Facebook, followed by Blacks, Whites and Hispanics, and that individuals with incomes over $100K spend the highest percentage of their total time online on Facebook.

A previous article by eMarketer showed statistics indicating that individuals who utilize Facebook most heavily are also tend to be those who spend the most money online. The top 20% of Facebook users spent an average of $67 in online shopping during the 1st quarter of 2010, while Internet users who did not visit Facebook at all bought significantly less online than average, spending only $27 during the quarter. 

I guess this is why everyone is trying to establish a marketing presence on Facebook, although I worry about the signal-to-noise ratio once it becomes commonplace for companies to send out commercial messages on Facebook. 

But as another article I saw today--this one by MarketingCharts.com--indicates, although Facebook usage was off a bit in June, both in the number of new users added and activity by the site's prime 18-44 demographic, there are now 125,000,000 active Facebook users in the United States--50% of whom log on in any given day. (The U.S. population is approximately 307 million people.) An estimated 400 million people worldwide are active Facebook users.

This is pretty staggering, and if indeed accurate, means that about 20% of the U.S. Population, across all ages, uses Facebook on a daily basis and almost 41% uses it regularly.

In recent months, there have been issues raised about Facebook's seemingly perpetually-changing privacy policy, which this Newsweek article by Daniel Lyons suggests is misguided and aimed to leverage user data for commercial profitability. There were stories about how people were threatening to stop using Facebook, but none of my 118 Friends dropped off and although I'm sure Facebook Chief Mark Zuckerberg and crew have noted the June decline, I don't think they have too much to worry about just yet.