Comments on The Official Netflix Blog: Today's Release is Live

how about we add a change that will actually matte...

2007-10-15T08:10:00.000-07:00

how about we add a change that will actually matter?
who cares about making a profile... this is netflix, go to a real networking website.

when will it possible to watch movies instantly on a mac? not everyone in this world owns pcs.

Its up to your friends to turn that off if they do...

2007-09-23T18:34:00.000-07:00

Its up to your friends to turn that off if they don't want to receive the emails. The setting is under Your Account, then Email Subscriptions.

I'm not sure if this is the right place to leave t...

2007-09-23T16:25:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure if this is the right place to leave this comment-- I'm having a hard time navigaiting this blog looking for subjects-- but my main concern about "friends" is I don't know if I can control when netflix notifies my friends about things like when I leave a note and that makes me wary to do anything with the features. I loved the "my 2 cents" thing but I am very embarrassed to have been the cause of my friends' personal e-mail boxes receiving invitations to see my notes. I want them truly to just "live on the site" (as the FAQ says!). I've run a few little tests that show that at least some of my friends definitely get alerted by netflix about my activity. I suppose they could use e-mail filters but I do not want to be associated with spam, you know? Thanks-- Bonky

Hah!

2007-09-22T13:25:00.000-07:00

Hah!

Haha. Well, it's a mystery to me. You actually we...

2007-09-22T13:10:00.000-07:00

Haha. Well, it's a mystery to me. You actually went up a percent to me today (79% now). How very very curious.

@Angel - I still see you as 73% today. So, your 5...

2007-09-22T12:40:00.000-07:00

@Angel - I still see you as 73% today. So, your 5 5-star movies I rated as 'not interested' seems to have had no effect on my end. Rather surprising to me. Did your number change?

I'm thinking now that those 100 movies I marked as 'not interested' were not the reason for the 6% drop. It must have been the 10 you rated or the 5 that I rated with stars. Maybe you gave a 1 to one of my 5-stars. 6% just seems like a huge overnight leap when we must have well over 1000 ratings in common.

Perhaps Faves/Fans are recalculated with more accuracy like Friends are? Though you are the only person on my list that changed more than 1% the last few days and nobody else has mentioned seeing a big change.

If you change someone from a Friend to a Fave, you...

2007-09-21T18:16:00.000-07:00

If you change someone from a Friend to a Fave, you will lose access to their notes, queue and 1-4 star ratings.

I've done this.Just click the Remove Friend button...

2007-09-21T16:28:00.000-07:00

I've done this.

Just click the Remove Friend button. Then it turns into a Save to Fave button. Just click it again. Presto!

I hope this question hasn't been asked already - I...

2007-09-21T16:26:00.000-07:00

I hope this question hasn't been asked already - I skimmed for it before posting:

What should I do if I want to change someone from a Friend to a Fave? I have a lot of people on my friends list who I don't even talk to anymore, but I like having their ratings, quotes, queues, and recent activity available to me. I don't want to lose their info by removing them as a friend before I add them as a fave.

Yes, but I have rated far more movies than you hav...

2007-09-21T13:10:00.000-07:00

Yes, but I have rated far more movies than you have, so it would seem to me that the number you see should have been the one to change so much.

Maybe this goes back to what Michael said about them taking shortcuts to estimate the Sim% for non-friends.

Perhaps it works something like this: For calculating the Sim% I see for you, Netflix just looks at the movies in your favorite genres, and vis versa. It could look at very different movies to calculate each of our numbers. All the movies I marked 'not interested' were in 1 category (not sure, but think it was Sports & Fitness). Whichever category, it wasn't one of my favorites.

Another possibility is that they calculate the Sim% I see for you just looking at the movies you gave 4 & 5 stars, and vis versa.

I'm doing an experiment. I rated 5 of your favorite movies as 'not interested', all movies I hadn't seen or rated We'll see what that does to our numbers tomorrow.

The more 5 star lists I see the more strongly I ag...

2007-09-21T12:34:00.000-07:00

The more 5 star lists I see the more strongly I agree with AngelMonkey (among others, but she always presents her case particularly well) that there should be the same star dropdowns for 'public' members as we see for friends. Because as it is we're understandably seeing the same 'ol 'Citizen Kanes' and 'On the Waterfronts' again and again, with frustratingly few buried and possibly imperfect gems, which I suspect are all bunched on the 3 and 4 star lists. And if someone has, say, rated 'A touch of Evil' 1 star and 'Deuce Bigalow' 4 stars, then we desperately need to know that!

Well... we're kinda "testing" how things work here...

2007-09-21T10:48:00.000-07:00

Well... we're kinda "testing" how things work here. I would imagine that's helpful to everyone, including Michael.

Baff, I believe that sim % is based on how similarly the person rated the movies you also rated. This is why my friends who have only rated 300 movies say I'm 77% similar to them, but they only show up as 63% sim to me. Because of all the 300 movies they rated, we rated very similarly. But of all the 2500 movies I've rated, they only rated a small percentage of them similarly. It's weird because often I find people with very similar movie tastes have low sim % to me because they just haven't rated enough -- the more movies you rate, the lower sim % people become to you that haven't rated as much as you.

Just one question, how do you tell if you have bee...

2007-09-21T10:11:00.000-07:00

Just one question, how do you tell if you have been added as a fav by someone else and where can they see that they have been added as a fav to you? If there is a way to tell please post for me.

@Anon - If someone else has added you as a Fave they will appear in another list below your Faves entitled Fans.

Love the new features! Just one question, how do y...

2007-09-21T05:43:00.000-07:00

Love the new features! Just one question, how do you tell if you have been added as a fav by someone else and where can they see that they have been added as a fav to you? If there is a way to tell please post for me. Thanx! Again the features are terrific!!

Hey guys, shouldn't you 2 just exchange e-mail add...

2007-09-21T03:37:00.000-07:00

Hey guys, shouldn't you 2 just exchange e-mail addresses, and have done with it?! We promise to shut our eyes and count to 100 while you post and then erase them!

Oh right, I marked another 100 movies as 'not inte...

2007-09-21T01:48:00.000-07:00

Oh right, I marked another 100 movies as 'not interested' yesterday. Must have been something in there you gave a high rating. Nobody else in my friends/faves/fans changed at all.

A bit odd that I didn't change at all to you though.

@Baff - Strange. No I didn't. I did put in a handf...

2007-09-21T01:18:00.000-07:00

@Baff - Strange. No I didn't. I did put in a handful of new ratings in the past couple days (maybe 10) for movies I saw on other people's pages and saw I had never rated before... but I doubt that small sampling could have such a large effect. Have you been doing lots more rating?

I wonder what else could cause such a discrepency or fluctuation in sim percentage. You're holding at 78% sim to me at the moment.

@Angel - You just re-rate a bunch of movies? You ...

2007-09-21T00:42:00.000-07:00

@Angel - You just re-rate a bunch of movies? You just went from 79% to 73% for me.

AngelMonkey said : "I choose to accurately reflect...

2007-09-20T23:03:00.000-07:00

AngelMonkey said : "I choose to accurately reflect how I felt about a movie rather than artificially "jacking-up" my ratings to get more recommendations".

I totally respect that, but all I can say is that I've seen some really terrific movies that I would probably never have known about had I not adapted to way the recommendation engine has been (I think misguidedly) set up. I've said it before and I'll say it again, that since 3 stars is billed as "liked it", then recommendations should start at 3 stars, not 4. If that happened everyone's suggestions would skyrocket without them having to mess with their ratings.

No, it's not funny. it's a strange bug. i've seen ...

2007-09-20T22:03:00.000-07:00

No, it's not funny. it's a strange bug. i've seen it too, but was unsure what i was seeing. Very hard to debug. I've forwarded everyone's comments about this disappearing fave thing to our team so we can start to fix it. Once again, thanks for the input.

AngelMonkeyHere is an example of the problem I hav...

2007-09-20T21:51:00.000-07:00

AngelMonkey
Here is an example of the problem I have with dissapearing Faves. I added you as a Fave days ago. Your pix stayed for a day then went away. But if I go into my son's profile and click on my icon and look at my Faves the way a strange would they are all there as well as yours.

In other words everyone but me can see my Faves. Sounds funny but it's not.

I also have very few recommendations (17 at the mo...

2007-09-20T21:41:00.000-07:00

I also have very few recommendations (17 at the moment, I believe), but that's because I have to think very highly of a movie to give it 4 or more stars. I realize it's a trade-off, but I choose to accurately reflect how I felt about a movie rather than artificially "jacking-up" my ratings to get more recommendations. And besides, a bunch of my ratings are lower than they should be because 2 stars used to mean "Just OK" and 1 star was "didn't like it". But whatever. I won't bother going back to re-rate everything until we get 1/2 stars (hopefully someday).

I'd like to second wanting to see more than just 5-star ratings. My long-winded explaination of why is in the "Thunderdome" post comments. But mostly, I really want Fans and visitors to my profile to be able to see my 4-star movies because with the way I rate, that's high praise, and I'd like to share those movies.

Michael - Bug ?Ok I've been playing with the Fave...

2007-09-20T21:33:00.000-07:00

Michael - Bug ?

Ok I've been playing with the Faves. It's actually not very interesting to add Faves and they not show up or show up briefly and dissapear. The cool thing is the keeping them afterall.

So, since they kept dissapearing and no matter how many I added I only saw 10 - I just decided to add a lot more and see what happened. I still only saw 10 on my page.

However, I went into my son's profile and he had me as a fave. When I clicked on my pix from his page all the ones I saved showed up for him to see. The pix and nickname were there but no %.

I still only had 10 on my page. This isn't about privacy. I'm using FoxFire so I tried it on IE and it was the same there.

I wanted to try deleting the sub profile to see if that would make any difference but there doesn't seem to be a way to delete it.

Any ideas? Or will I just not be able to add more than 10 Faves?

@Ang. In my experience the key to recommendations ...

2007-09-20T19:34:00.000-07:00

@Ang. In my experience the key to recommendations is at the high end, not the low. After I heard that recs don't kick-in for anything less than 4 and 5 stars (i.e. 'not interested' + 1 star + 2 stars suppress movies, and 3 stars are considered 'neutral'), I pushed all my 3 stars up to 4, and my 4 up to 5 stars, with the result that my recs literally went up ten-fold within a couple of days, may Eisenstein, Bergman, Wells, Bresson, Fellini, Tarkovsky et al have mercy on my soul....

For Example - When I went back to the site - right...

2007-09-20T17:23:00.000-07:00

For Example - When I went back to the site - right now it shows 26 Faves on the side tab on Community Home. I click on Friends and Faves and it shows 10 on the side tab and 10 pixs. It actually should be 12 I think but 2 have dissapeared.