LOS GATOS, Calif. — There’s no purple carpet for individuals who be certain that Netflix supplies an interesting person expertise; no Emmy or Oscar for an app that offers you the fitting suggestions for what to look at subsequent.
However these capabilities, when working accurately, are a bonus for Netflix within the streaming wars. Chief Product Officer Eunice Kim is the manager accountable for overseeing a lot of what makes Netflix tick — comparable to incorporating new options into the streaming service together with reside occasions, advertisements and cell video games.
Her staff analyzes client habits on Netflix to find out which exhibits and flicks may excite viewers subsequent on the streaming service and makes certain that the viewing expertise is clean. As such, she’s among the many most necessary Netflix executives you’ve most likely by no means heard of. That comes with the territory of being the particular person ensuring Netflix is a seamless product, one of the underappreciated points of the streaming wars.
“We make it look straightforward, nevertheless it’s not truly that straightforward underneath the hood,” mentioned Kim. “If we’re doing our jobs, we shouldn’t be speaking in regards to the product all that a lot, nevertheless it ought to be working for folks.”
Kim, who was promoted to the position in October, joined Netflix in early 2021. She beforehand served in product administration roles at Google Play and YouTube. She grew up in Fremont, Calif., the place her dad launched a startup out of their storage and she or he soldered motherboards. When she’s not taking a look at screens, she enjoys gardening.
She spoke with The Instances in an interview at Netflix’s Los Gatos headquarters. This dialog has been edited for size and readability.
How do you see the Netflix product expertise evolving as the corporate provides several types of content material, like video games or reside occasions?
These new content material sorts require us to essentially evolve the expertise that lives at this time. We prefer to joke that our present homepage expertise on TV is about 10 years outdated. That doesn’t imply we haven’t performed large quantities of labor to enhance it over time. However at its core, it’s remained the identical and it actually was constructed and designed for a streaming video-on-demand service. Each aspect of how we’ve organized every thing anticipates an on-demand video expertise.
Reside TV is like, “Hey, everybody collect on the sofa now and watch it now,” proper? So the indicators we ship to folks [to tell users] now’s the time to collect are tremendous necessary. In video games as nicely, the content material engagement and sample could be very completely different. You possibly can play the identical sport for a couple of years, if you happen to’re actually into it.
You’ve mentioned Netflix customers on common watch six genres. How do you anticipate what persons are feeling like watching?
We wish to listen slightly bit extra intently in actual time to the way in which that you just’re shopping the service, in order that we will interpret that slightly bit sooner. For instance, you dwelled slightly bit on this trailer — that’s possibly of curiosity. We’re actually simply making an attempt to make it possible for timeliness is constructed slightly bit extra deeply into the way in which that we perceive your wants.
To some extent, familiarity breeds curiosity. Like the primary time you see one thing, chances are you’ll or might not be paying consideration, you then hear about it via word-of-mouth, possibly there’s an L.A. Instances critic’s evaluation that you just noticed, you see a TikTok video on that title, there’s the billboard that’s on Sundown Boulevard. So it might be all of these issues lead up to a point of curiosity for a title.
Let’s use an instance to clarify how the suggestions work. Like, say, the sci-fi film “Insurgent Moon.”
The quite simple indicators for us are that you’re watching extra content material and that you just’re displaying us that you just get pleasure from it, that means that you just end the entire film otherwise you give it a thumbs up on the finish. After we take into consideration the classes that assist us determine what we like, there are a few issues we search for, together with your previous viewing habits. Is “Insurgent Moon” much like different kinds of content material that you just watch on the service? Otherwise you watched the trailer twice, otherwise you added it to your checklist otherwise you opened the e-mail about “Insurgent Moon.”
After which there’s what tells us how we all know that “Insurgent Moon” is a sci-fi film. It sounds very fundamental, however when you might have hundreds of titles on the service, how can we classify that? Sci-fi is a broad class. “Dune” is a really completely different taste from “Insurgent Moon.” So the precision of our understanding of the content material at what we name the metadata degree additionally helps us perceive the content material similarities.
How does person habits and knowledge have an effect on what trailers or promotion we see for Netflix content material?
The best way we current every title could be barely completely different for every particular person. We is perhaps enjoying up the angle in regards to the race automobile drivers being a part of a reside occasion like “The Netflix Cup,” or the golf gamers being a part of it as a result of we expect you’re going to acknowledge the face as a result of we all know that you just watched “Formulation 1: Drive to Survive.” After all, not everybody who watches Netflix will probably be enthusiastic about a given occasion. We wish to be certain that we attain the fitting folks. If we’ve by no means seen any indication that you’ve any curiosity in sports activities, it’s unlikely that we’d put that in entrance of you.
What number of completely different trailers are there for every present or film?
For our greater titles, we would have as much as six on common.
There was a technical situation with the truth relationship present “Love Is Blind’s” reside reunion in April, which was one in every of Netflix’s early efforts in reside programming. How has Netflix improved its livestreaming capabilities since then?
That was positively a humbling second for us. We positively took inventory and requested ourselves, what can we do higher? We’ve actually primarily simply been targeted on bettering our technical capabilities and our operations behind this and are tremendous enthusiastic about the way in which that we had been capable of pull off “The Netflix Cup” and more moderen reside occasions that we’ve had on the service. So we’re feeling fairly good, that we’ve realized from that and advanced from it.
In any complicated technical system, there could be any variety of issues that go fallacious, proper? There’s by no means a world in merchandise and tech the place there are not any errors. That’s simply not attainable. So actually the secret is how shortly did you catch your errors and repair them? That’s half the battle in our world.
How is Netflix working to enhance the expertise for avid gamers? For instance, on the cell app, avid gamers nonetheless must obtain the video games by way of the Apple and Google app shops first, moderately than have it’s immediately playable on the Netflix app.
Downloading from the app shops is one thing we do as a result of these are the insurance policies that we abide by in partnership with Google and Apple. We attempt to make that discovery as easy and seamless as attainable. I take into consideration one characteristic we’re significantly pleased with that made this simpler for our members. Should you’re in your iPhone and also you discover a sport, we’ve what we name a “backside sheet expertise.” [It] simply type of slides up, and you may simply press “set up,” and that installs with out touchdown you within the app retailer. That had a very nice bump in influence when it comes to making that have simpler for our members.
Netflix has expanded the variety of video games it presents. Are video games driving engagement?
We’re at nearly 90 video games proper now. We’ve been more than happy with the progress we’ve made and met the objectives that we had for 2023 round engagement.
How did you get enthusiastic about any such work?
My dad did a basic {hardware} startup out of his storage. So from a younger age, I realized how you can solder motherboards and stock microchips and would write advertising supplies for COMDEX, which was the large laptop commerce present again then.
Discussions about expertise and studying sci-fi had been a part of my household upbringing. It was ironic that I ran away to the East Coast for faculty to be a author as a result of I used to be simply so bored with the tech-speak, nevertheless it drew me again as a result of there’s one thing actually profound about the way in which that expertise can allow our lives and produce us pleasure. It might additionally deliver us distress if we’re not cautious. I believe discovering that proper steadiness is tremendous necessary.