Netflix announced its fourth quarter 2020 earnings today, but amid the actual figures presented, the company briefly mentioned a new feature it is working on. The working title for this is Random Play and will help you decide what to watch, showing the content that your algorithms think you will like. Netflix says this feature will be fully implemented for all users worldwide in the first half of this year.
The company has experimented with a random episode feature before, but this is a little different. In Netflix’s words, this feature “gives members the ability to choose to instantly watch a title chosen just for them instead of browsing”. In other words, the company has determined that people are so undecided about what to watch that it is better for Netflix itself to choose based on factors such as what you watched and what’s on your watch list.
Image courtesy of TechCrunch.
Shuffle Play was seen being tested in early August 2020 and will likely be very similar to the photo you see above. It is currently in limited testing and only on TV sets. According to Netflix, the feedback has been very positive so far.
As for the other news in the earnings report, Netflix is doing very well, having added 8.5 new paying subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2020 and 37 million new subscribers for the entire year 2020. It looks like the time to launch this feature it will come a long time, with more undecided viewers than ever to please.
