Gain Access Netflixed: The Epic Battle For Americas Eyeballs Scripted By Gina Keating Offered As Multimedia Format
soon as I saw this book while perusing Amazon I knew it was a must read,
Having worked at Blockbuster foryears during their decline and the ridiculousness of trying to sell books and other merchandise to customers, I knew that part of the story pretty well.
I am a solid believer in competition, and personally have always been more of a theater goer or a spur of the moment movie renter.
I always just figured Netflix users were pretty patient people that didn't mind waiting for new releases,
The author here gives a very nicely detailed account of how Netflix built up their customer base by actually giving the customer the freedom of what they wanted, when, and where.
Except for the recent price increase, Although this is essentially a documentary it is played out like watching a drama film, and a thrilling one at that, The author manages to really give the reader a feel of the excitement and terror that surrounded all these corporate employees during a huge tech boom.
I think towards the last third of the book the story begins to get a little rushed, and there could have been more about Movie Gallery and how they actually had a successful business going with the Gamecrazy stores which had a chance to compete with Gamestop.
Or some more detail into the final days of Blockbuster with the closing of thousands of stores and the sell off to Dish
Since the pastyears alone have radically changed the entire entertainment and media industries, it's worth a read to see how it all went down, or in Netflixes case, up.
I miss video stores. I'm old enough to remember when VCRs were costprohibitive, No chance we could buy one, but the small video store in my small town rented them, The store was small, but the VCRs weren't, They came in their own oversized armored carrying case, complete with cables you could use to strangle a rhinoceros, We wanted to get our money's worth, so we would rent movies three and four at a time, Binge watching before it was cool, Nothing beat wandering the isles, scanning the covers, and deciding if you'll take the risk, Today's kids will never know what they're missing,
Netflixed was a fun, welltold history, This is a business book about the rise of Netflix and how it competed against Blockbuster and to a lesser extent Redbox, It's a lot of interesting facts, The start of Netflix and how it developed under Reed Hasting as he moved for more control over the company,
The most interesting part is how Blockbuster implodes, Under Antioco reign, they were able to quickly create an online DVD rental service that compete with Netflix, got rid of late fees despite the store franchisees complaints to keep it which only helped in the short run, and position themselves for more future success.
Unfortunately, corporate raider Carl Icahn did care for Antioco and instead of a raise, he negotiated Antioco exit, The next CEO basically neglected Antioco's work and insisted on trying ideas that another CEO had tried to failure in thes,
I would have like more on Redbox and recent PR disasters like Qwikster, but it gave a good overview of Netflix and the evolution of online DVD rental and online streaming movie services.
A very good and rather detailed narrative of the rise of Netflix and their rivalry with Blockbuster, The book chronicles the founding of Netflix dispelling some myths along the way, its rather rapid rise to the top of the video rental business, Blockbusters attempts to copy and beat them, how and why that didnt work out, and their eventual demise.
The book uses a chronological approach in relating the story, which sometimes works out well but doesnt in other times, Especially in later chapters, this approach leads to some problems as the themes of individual chapters cover multiple years, while other important events are unfolding simultaneously.
This creates some nonlinearities and going back and forth in time across chapters,
The book is excellent in giving us some insider views especially on Blockbuster, The conventional story you are likely to find on the internet is very simplistic and somewhat misleading, This account provides a detailed look at how managerial judgments, external stakeholders, corporate parenting
and boardroom drama all distracted and disrupted Antiochs attempts to carry blockbuster to the online rental and digital delivery models.
The story as told here is much more nuanced, and that is all for the better,
Similarly, we get a much fuller picture of what went on at Netflix while Blockbuster was coming after them, We also learn more about Netflixs operations, including its distribution system though Id have loved to see more on the logistics of this.
The presentation of how most Wall Street analysts periodically predicted the imminent demise of Netflix is both hilarious and fascinating and thoughtprovoking,
I wish the book had given a more detailed account of how the recommendation engine was built and how it worked.
I was disappointed not to see much more on the development of Roku and how Hastings ditched the launch of the proprietary settop box at the last minute.
There is no discussion of this secret project known as project Griffin in the book the impression is that Netflix planned to spinoff Roku and put software in electronic devices all along.
That contradicts my understanding based on other sources,
The disastrousprice hike and the ensuing Qwikster debacle also seemed to get short shrift, Id have appreciated a more detailed coverage of that episode, Id also have loved to see more about what the studios were thinking, More interviews with studio executives would have made it better, Well, for me at least, Finally, I think Ms. Keating could have told us more about WalMarts efforts to compete with Netflix, why it failed and why they offered digital streaming for a while after they turned over the online rental business to Netflix.
In addition, while Redbox gets a mention, I think it deserves its own chapter, including a discussion of their role in BBIs demise.
The lack of Mr, Hastingss endorsement of the book, lack of interviews with him for the purpose of the book, and his refusal to let current executives be interviewed by Ms.
Keating robs the reader of the chance to hear their stories, While this is a weakness of the book, I am thinking that may be this is not a serious shortcoming, since then the book might have been dominated by Mr.
Hastingss perspective.
One thing that bugged me about the book was that it lists a bibliography but no endnotes referring to particular pages and giving references for those pages.
I also found that there was a dearth of references in the bibliography to detailed articles that I could pursue to learn more about this important topic.
I wish Ms. Keating had included more outside sources that the interested reader could pursue,
These shortcomings notwithstanding, I think this is an excellent book detailing an important episode in annals of corporate America, It would make great reading for a multitude of audiences: any serious student of business, any startup owners looking for guidance on sound entry strategies, executives looking to understand a classic example of disruptive innovation and seeking strategies to deal with disruptive innovations, and anyone in general who wants to understand how an upstart can challenge and overcome a giant in its industry.
These two companies changed how we spend our time and our entertainment habits, For anyone who wants to understand them and read a great story while doing so, Id strongly recommend this book, Now I know who to blame for the end of VHS and the change to DVD, because they were cheaper to mail!
Really fascinating read about the history/growth of Netflix, from VHS to DVD to today's streaming movies, and how those two brilliant young men were behind those changes.
Good walkthrough from humble origins to recent events,
Great read for those wondering how they managed to drive blockbuster out of business and turn an industry on their heads.
Super libro!!! me encantó cada página pues no es el típico caso que lees en internet o en un MBA, Prvýchrokov Netflixu a príbeh toho, ako sa v boji s Netflixom samozničil gigant medzi požičovňami DVDčiek Blockbuster.
Kniha sa končí cca v rokukeď aj Netflix stále ešte hlavne posiela DVDčka poštou a jeho budúcnosť je stále neistá a pre väčšinu normálnych smrteľníkov je tu viac detailov o Netflixe a Blockbuster a ich biznis stratégiách a prešľapoch, ako by ich mohlo zaujímať, ale inak pekný prototypný obrázok toho, ako David za desaťročie dokáže zničiť Goliáša.
Príbeh Blockbusteru je pritom skoro zaujímavejší ako Netflixu, Tldr príčetnému riaditeľovi firmy škrtol aktivistický investor polovicu dohodnutej ročnej odmeny, tak riaditeľ odišiel, Nový riaditeľ predtým riadil obchody s potravinami, tak rozhodol, že sa nebude robiť žiadne požičiavanie filmov cez internet, lebo internet nemá budúcnosť, ale do Blockbuster obchodov sa okrem DVDčiek pridajú aj elektronika a potraviny a tak, lebo každý chce nakupovať hocičo v Blockbusteri.
Keď svojim manažérom prvý víkend plán vysvetlil, väčšina z nich hneď zavolala svojim maklérom a predali všetky svoje akcie Blockbusteru.
Samozrejme, potraviny v Blockbusteri nikto kupovať nechcel a firma skrachovala, Dense, but gives good insight about how Netflix changed the game, Its more about good ol times with VHS and DVD renting rather than streaming wars, When I pulled Netflixed off the library shelves as I was browsing in person, I was mostly thinking of them as an impressive technology company.
Netflix uses Cassandra, a well thought of NoSQL database, and provides some of the best of the tools around that, which I've used for several years now.
And Netflix has had some great sessions at Oscon, mostly around their devops practices like the simian army,
Netflix the service is something I have mostly dodged, I was never a customer of the disks by mail service, The idea that my family would agree on movies to watch and watch them at a regular pace was unfathomable and we've had Tivo since.
A couple of years ago my young adult kids started using their friend's netflix accounts on their pc's, tivo and dvd player.
And then just never deleted the accounts, So I reluctantly replaced those "stolen" accounts with my purchased one,
So Netflix the company was new to me, But I had interviewed with Hollywood Video when moving to Portland, so I had ran into the edge of that company, And had rented videos from Blockbuster for years, a long time ago,
So a long way to say, that I was definitely part of the target audience of the outside of this book.
But perhaps not as much so for the inside,
This book was basically an insiders view of the rise of Netflix and to a lesser degree Redbox and the fall of Blockbuster and to a lesser degree Hollywood and Movie Gallery.
It went back and force between Netflix and Blockbuster, naming names and strategies, It read like an insider book, though it was written by a journalist, It never really got into the details of the technology side, It did talk about the early technology some the handling of dvds and placing of distribution centers and the queue and the matching algorithm.
But the pacing was off and the book dragged some by the end, But it was worth reading, even more so if you were also on the edge as Netflix appeared and were interested in seeing that company in context.
.of. This was a great, and very interesting read, It starts with the formation of Netflix and goes through their battle with Blockbuster and continues throughwith their CEO problems,
The story was extremely well written, the main focus is the battle between Netflix and Blockbuster, and it does a great job of showing the intents and struggles people in both companies faced as they attempted to not only stay in business themselves, but put the other out of business.
Even if you are not interested in the story behind how Netflix came to be what it is today this book may still interest you, as it's main focus is on the people and the struggle to make the business thrive, not the business itself.
I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads,