Netflix’s tool that matches viewers to films and programming may be discontinued.
The Match % indicates how closely the algorithm feels subscribers’ preferences coincide with a certain piece of content.
It basically replaced the previous Surprise Me option, which was deleted early last year.
Although both of these capabilities were intended to choose titles that were relevant to people’s stated watching interests, the emphasis is now shifting to tags to serve this job.
A Netflix spokesman has now stated that the reduction and shift to tags will ‘likely’ occur.
Examples of tags that pop up to try and help viewers decide what to watch include ‘award-winning directors’, ‘medical TV shows’, ‘feel-good dramas’ and ‘period pieces’.
Allan Donald, Netflix’s Director of Products, stated to The New York Times that tags were similar to ‘cover lines’ in magazines.
‘Imagine magazines that have no cover lines, and there were just photographs on them,’ he said.
‘Tags make as much of a difference as a cover line in that snap “this is for me” decision.’
He also noted that while testing the elimination of tags, ‘people would take much longer to choose’.
‘They would drop out of a title because they didn’t like it too much or because they didn’t know what they were getting,’ he explained.
There are now around 30 staff whose sole responsibility is tagging.
Netflix’s chief product officer, Eunice Kim, stated that if consumers did not press play within 53 seconds, their odds of watching anything decreased ‘precipitously’.
Tags have existed since Netflix’s DVD programme, which ended in September.
With over 3,000 tags on the platform — the most popular being ‘romantic’, ‘exciting’, and ‘suspenseful’ and the least popular being ‘occupation: farmhand’ — executives see tags as one of the site’s ‘promotional assets,’ according to the Times.