My highest ranked friend

I've been checking out the new Community features on Netflix.com. Now our Netflix profiles include a ranking, based on how "influential" we are at using our reviews and lists to get other folks to watch more movies. My rank is 28,188, which isn't bad, considering how many millions of us there are. But then I saw my friend Walt D in LV, whose rank is 838! I have to get busy writing more reviews.

I met Walt through this blog. He is always sending us, his Netflix friends, interesting Movie Notes on everything he sees.

Here are the stats from his profile:

Member since June 2007
rank 838
72% similar to NetflixFan
19 friends
235 reviews
3 lists

Have you noticed your rank? What do you think of it?

Official Netflix blog launched

Netflix has finally launched an official blog, but with a unique focus. Instead of being about the company, or the rental experience, or about movies, The Netflix Community blog is devoted only to the Community features of Netflix (Friends, Profiles, custom lists, etc) and we who use them. It's where you can go to discover new features or changes to existing ones, and give feedback.

Unlike Hacking Netflix, or this blog, the Netflix Community blog is written by folks who work for Netflix, "by the team that is building the social elements of the Netflix site," so it's the horse's mouth.


Via Hacking Netflix

My similiarity is different from yours

Beano is a longtime Netflix Fan friend. He says he's my number one Netflix Friend, at 82% similarity. The problem is, on my Netflix Friends page, I have no friends with that level of similarity. The highest on my end is 77%. I think Netflix is figuring similarity based on different factors for Beano and me. It could be a ratio of ratings in common to movies in common, or something like that. How does Netflix calculate similarity? To find the answer, I plugged the word "similarity" into the Netflix Help Center Quick search:

Q: What does the Friends “% Similarity” number mean?
A: Based on the movies you and your Friends have watched and rated, Netflix calculates the similarity in how you rate, and the movies you select.

The calculation takes into consideration many factors, including the relative number of movies each of you have seen and for which you overlap (for instance, if you’ve rated 20 movies and overlap on them all, that is “more similar” than if you’ve rated 2000 movies and only overlap on 20), as well as the obscurity of the overlapping titles (if you both like the same rare film, that is “more similar” than if you both like a top 10 movie).

Based on these factors, you can accurately compare yourself to each of your Friends. This value will change over time as one or both of you rate more movies, and as the overlapping movies you’ve seen increases.