- the ubiquitous (and soon obsolete) red envelopes
The Tortoise’s interest (obsession?) with DVD rental company Netflix was renewed recently with a brief but revealing interview with Netflix CEO Reed Hastings on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition program.
In addition to his candid admission that he likes watching movies – especially comedies – in theatres, Hastings talks a bit about Netflix’s drive to improve its recommendation algorithms, and of course its strategy to reinvent itself (validating our earlier observation) by making obsolete it’s ubiquitous red mailing envelopes. Its future is very much tied to negotiating more deals with movie studies to stream content directly to TVs and computers. But another part of this strategy depends on increasing availability of Wi-Fi equipped televisions. Says Hastings, “I think that we’re on a trajectory over probably 10 years to have nearly everything on streaming. Not just Netflix, but other firms also — and also, to have Wi-Fi built into every television over 10 years.”