CALIFORNIA: Neil Hunt, Chief Product Officer for Netflix, announced today that the company would be increasing the amount of time a viewer must watch a show before the video service asks if they are, indeed, still watching.
“In 103% of cases, with a margin of error of 3%, the consumer is still watching [Netflix]. We vastly underestimated just how startlingly long the typical customer is engaged with our service.”
Hunt went on to explain that the elimination of the prompt was purely for customer satisfaction purposes, and not simply to stop the flood of sarcastic, condescending Twitter and Facebook posts.
“What we found was that many customers were deeply offended by the question ‘Are you still watching?’ – as if Netflix was assuming that a normal individual would surely have something – anything – more important to do in their daily lives after so many consecutive hours sitting motionless in front of a screen.”
The announcement by the CPO concluded with his assertion that, “Moving forward, we’re willing to accept that any amount of time spent watching Netflix is a ‘normal’ amount of time.”
Despite repeated requests for comment from Netflix power users, none were available to return our calls.
I designed a program called NextFlik that prevents Netflix from stopping after every two episodes to see if you are still watching. You can check it out if you are interested at http://www.next-flik.com