By Subin Hong
Films produced by content distribution company Netflix will not be able to participate in the Cannes Film Festival again this year. In 2017, Bong Joon-ho’s <Okja> and Noah Baumbach’s <The Myerowitz Story> attempted to enter the Cannes Film Festival for the first time, but the organizing committee revised the rules to invite only theater releases in France to the competition section from 2018 due to opposition from the French theater union. As such, film companies are wary of Netflix, which is growing rapidly, building a large number of consumers around the world.
Netflix is a media content distribution company established in 1997. Netflix was in the form of a home video rental shop until 2000. The company’s early model used the way of mail-in home video rental system. This had the advantage of renting videos without going to offline stores, but it made people mind revisiting video stores because they couldn’t watch the latest film and couldn’t watch it at any time they want. Since 2000, Netflix made its improvement by building an online streaming system, and the number of users has begun to increase rapidly. In addition, Netflix satisfies users by recommending content suitable for users using Big Data, which collects, analyzes large amounts of information and provides customized information.
Netflix’s many conveniences people feel willing to pay more than $100 a month. Netflix removed the barriers of devices and help users to access content systematically through internet browsers and a mobile application. The users can enjoy content optimized for themselves on any device with a single login. They use 76,897 keywords to categorize contents and subdivide each user’s preferred content genre. Since offering online streaming services in 2000, Netflix has built a system of structured Cine-match systems (a system that users try and evaluate directly), improving the accuracy of content recommendations for users by more than 10%.
Netflix is also becoming more popular with its own original contents. It was a reasonable challenge for Netflix, which currently has more than 81 million paid subscribers in more than 190 countries. There are originals, self-produced content that is much more popular than regular American dramas, such as <Stranger Things>, <13 Reasons Why> and <The Get Down>. To the extent that, there are people who subscribe to Netflix to view these works since Netflix original content ensures high quality. It is called ‘OTT’ service that provides a variety of media contents such as broadcasting programs, movies and education through the internet, such as Netflix. In addition to Netflix, many OTT companies, including Amazon Prime, YouTube Red, and Hulu, are now trying to provide their own content. Netflix knows that producing original contents is not only more profitable, but it also allows to increase the awareness of their companies, rather than simply offering videos circulated on TV or in theaters online alone. Their attitude toward differentiating themselves from other media companies made people think that they ‘go ahead of the times.’
Since Netflix has attracted many users with its online streaming system, many other companies have attempted to build similar systems. However, Netflix’s leading media systems and differentiated content offerings give users overwhelming satisfaction over other programs. Meanwhile, Netflix is set to release a mobile system only for the application in mobile devices that is cheaper than the regular one, with many media industry experts expecting them to attract more users.