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⏭️ The wild history of Netflix’s buttons
The Hustle
April 14, 2022
PLUS: A competitive sitter, personal chef apps, and more.
Astronomers have confirmed that the Bernardinelli-Bernstein comet’s icy nucleus is the largest ever observed at ~80 miles across — bigger than Rhode Island and 50x larger than usual. It’s headed toward Earth, but don’t worry — at its closest point ~2031, it’ll miss us by 1B+ miles.
In today’s email:
Buttonomics: The numbers behind Netflix’s buttons.
Chart: Airbnb’s gigantic scale and cleaning fee hatred.
Personal chefs? There’s an app for that.
Around the web: On-demand excuses, competitive sitting, texts as art, and more cool internet finds.
🎧 On the go? Listen to today’s podcast to hear about Meta’s AR glasses ambition, kites as clean energy, and what’s up with Airbnb’s high cleaning fees.
The big idea
Zachary Crockett
The economics of Netflix’s buttons
On Monday, Netflix released a “Two Thumbs Up” button — allowing users to indicate when they really like something — after nearly a year of testing.
Netflix buttons like these may seem simple, but their backstories and impacts are far from it — especially for 2. Let’s discuss.
On your average day…
… Netflix’s “Skip Intro” button is pressed 136m times. Add it up, and 195 cumulative years are saved by skipping intros daily.
Oddly enough, the idea came ~6 years ago when Cameron Jonhson, director of product innovation at Netflix, was watching “Game of Thrones.”
For the uninitiated, the “Game of Thrones” title sequence is beautiful, but long AF. (Napkin math: The ~2-minute intro accounts for ~4% of episodes’ total lengths in season one.)
Johnson sometimes skipped ahead, though often made the painful error of skipping too far.
And he wasn’t alone
His team discovered that Netflix viewers were also manually skipping ahead in the first 5 minutes of shows 15% of the time.
After running tests and landing on “Skip Intro” as the name, reviews were phenomenal. One Netflix engineer quipped, “I’m not sure that if you put a button that said ‘free cupcake’ that it would get more clicks.”
Netflix formally added Skip Intro to TV in 2017.
The other button…
… is the Netflix button itself, that with one touch sounds the budummmm and propels you into Netflixland.
On Jan. 4, 2011, when Netflix had just 16m members in North America, the company announced a partnership to place the button smack-dab in the middle of many TV remotes.
For Netflix, it meant every time people saw a remote, they were either reminded how easily they could use Netflix or that they weren’t a member.
For TV manufacturers, it meant payments from Netflix. Given the win-win, nowadays it’s common practice and costs ~$1 per remote.
Speaking of buttons, we want to know — what’s your favorite?
SNIPPETS
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TikTok’s new Effect House lets users make AR camera effects , which other users can then incorporate into their videos. #emerging-tech
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Ouch: US Amazon warehouses see over 2x the rate of serious injuries as other warehouses. In 2021, Amazon employed 33% of all US warehouse workers but accounted for 49% of industry injuries. #big-tech
MFM: Sam Parr thinks Canva is going to have a huge IPO. #mfm
Chart
Singdhi Sokpo
As Airbnb grows, so do cleaning fees
Airbnb always looks like a great deal. Until you realize the cleaning fee for a 2-bedroom costs an extra $500.
Since Airbnb was founded in 2008, relative Google search interest for “cleaning fees” is up 212%, and ~85% of US short-term rentals now have them, per The Wall Street Journal.
Some cleaning fee stats:
Fees increased 9.8% between 2020 and 2021, and then another 6.6% by 2022.
The average fee for 1-bedroom properties is $73 (up from $59 in 2020), and $410 for a 5-bed coastal property.
Who’s to blame? Inflation and pandemic-era sanitation, no doubt.
Still, some customers think the fees are just unreasonably high. And can you blame them?
Free Resource
5 sharp cover letter templates for job hunters
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Standard cover letter