"Look at the bigger picture."
- Francis Underwood, House of Cards
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has written an 11-page essay that's embedded below. It's quite excellent, and lays out his vision for the future of Internet TV (Peter Kafka of AllThingsD has a crisp summary of the key bullet points HERE).
In particular, it underscores why Hastings' Netflix deserves to be mentioned in the same reverential tones as Apple, Amazon and Google.
For one, there is the clear articulation of a 'North Star' that guides the company forward; namely, winning more of their members 'moments of truth' - i.e., those times when a consumer could play a game, read a book, chat on the phone or watch conventional TV, but chooses Netflix instead.
The virtue of having a North Star is that it instructs clear narrative-driven thinking, tightening focus, process and execution. It is one reason that we readily associate Apple, Amazon and Google as the gold standard companies of their industry, and so few others.
It's also one reason that it almost feels inevitable that at some point, Google (4.3% of their market cap), Apple (2.8% of their market cap) or Amazon (10.3% of their market cap) will **need** to acquire Netflix (I'd add Disney as a dark horse candidate).
After all, TV viewing captures a billion hours a day of consumers' time, and Netflix has created a model whereby 30 million of these consumers are paying a monthly subscription fee for access to the service.
In other words, despite all of the various activities that fight for consumers attention, Netflix is winning at: A) securing members; B) monetizing those members; and C) growing their base through differentiation.
Talk about **earned attention.**
Netflix is Betting BIG on Apps
It is with that backdrop that I took particular interest in Hastings' assertion that Apps -- not streams -- but Apps --will replace Channels as the primary construct for delivering Internet TV. He mentioned the term 25 times in the document, no less.
I think that there are two things that one needs to keep in mind relative to the "apps" versus "channels" topic.
One is that a channel is simply a payload, and an app is simply a wrapper for delivering that payload.
It's no different in that context from saying that Apple turned the phone into an app. We don't need to think about it in that context because the phone app does what a phone is supposed to do.
Quite the contrary. We now think of the iPhone as much more than a phone, right?
Two, is the unlike a simple envelope, the wrapper of an app can actually enable to DO stuff; namely, show you related content, extend the context with communications, enable you to share the content, rate it, excerpt it, roll it into a play list, etc.
The point is that an app can do things that a simple stream can not, and Hastings clearly groks that this is about delivering **native experiences.**
This is also why a show like 'House of Cards' launched with the entire Season 1. In Netflix, binge viewing is a native behavior, right?
Along these lines, Hastings specifically dispels the idea of Netflix even having a fixed notion of what constitutes a 'season' in their model.
It's all about being native, something that I have written extensively about, most recently HERE.
Related:
- Apple’s North Star vs. Earth’s Gravity: Four Takeaways from Apple’s Earnings Call
- Built-to-Thrive - The Standard Bearers: Apple, Google, Amazon
- Mobile 'native' publishing: Why our concept of content must evolve in the post-PC era
