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Bezig met laden... Netflixed: The Epic Battle for America's Eyeballsdoor Gina Keating
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This book relates the history of Netflix and its a long struggle for greatness marked by multiple disasters, lucky breaks, personal betrayal, and broken hearts. It has more drama than most of the movies Netflix rents. Netflix has come a long way since 1997 when two Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, Marc Randolph and Reed Hastings decided to start an online DVD store before most people owned a DVD player. They were surprised and elated when launch day traffic in April 1998 crashed their server and resulted in 150 sales. Today Netflix has more than 25 milllion subscribers and annual revenues above $3 billion. Yet long term success or even survival is still far from guaranteed. The author, a journalist recounts the absorbing fast paced drama of the company's turbulent rise to the top and its attempt to invent two new kinds of business. First it engaged in a grueling war against video store behemoth Blockbuster transforming movie rental forever. The it jumped into to an even bigger battle for online video streaming against Google, Hulu, Amazon, and the big cable companies. Netflix ushered in such innovations as DVD rental by mail, a patented online queue of upcoming rentals and a recommendation algorithm called Cinematch that proved crucial in its struggle against bigger rivals. Yet for all its success Netflix is still a polarizing company. Hastings is often heralded as a visionary, he was named Business Person of the Year by Fortune magazine even as he has been called the nation's worst CEO. Netflix also faces disgruntled customers after price increases and other stumbles that could tarnish the brand forever. The quest to become the world's portal for premium video on demand will determine nothing less than the future of entertainment and the Internet. Drawing on extensive new interviews and her years covering Netflix as a financial and entertainment reporter, the author makes this tale as absorbing as it tis important. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)384.84Social sciences Commerce, Communications, Transportation Telecommunications (Telegraph, Internet, Cables, Broadcasting, Telephones, Movies) Motion picture industryLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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Netflixed acknowledges these failures, but it is primarily concerned with success. Its core narrative traces the history of Netflix from its Silicon Valley origins in the late 1990s to its domination of the home video market in the mid-2000s, using the company’s struggle with bricks-and-mortar rival Blockbuster Video as a centerpiece. Gina Keating, a business journalist, keeps the focus squarely on the corporate side of the story. Senior managers’ decisions about capitalization, marketing, pricing, and similar matters are described and analyzed in exhaustive detail, backed by her extensive interviews with key players. Aspects of the story that take place beyond the boardroom – changes in technology, the impact of DVDs on home-viewing patterns, Netflix user’s experience of the service – are pushed to the narrative margins.
How much you enjoy Netflixed will, as a result, depend a great deal on what you hope to get from it. If you’re looking for a business book along the lines of Ken Auletta’s Googled, Adam Cohen’s The Perfect Store (EBay), or Robert Spector’s Get Big Fast (Amazon) -- a “corporate biography” that admires its subject’s successes and treads lightly around its faults – you’ve found it. If you’re hoping for something like Joshua Greenberg’s From Betamax to Blockbuster that imbeds the business in a rich social, cultural, and technological context, this may feel like too much about too little.
I fall squarely in the second category, and I frequently found myself skimming the details even though the main story held my interest. If you’re in the first category, though – if you habitually read business books for fun – add a star (or a star-and-a-half) to my rating, and enjoy. ( )