House of Cards is an American political drama series
developed and produced by Netflix. The number of its audience in a week surpasses any other single television show except for Oscars. According to New York
Times journalist David Carr, because of the amount of time and money invested
in collecting user data, House
of Cards was actually a fairly safe bet to be a success.
What
does it mean by collecting user data, every time people take an action while
watching --- pause, fast-forward, rewind, abandon a show after watching for a
few minutes, etc., they create what is known in the world of big data as an
"event"--- a discrete action that could be logged, recorded and
analyzed. And the data is the power, Netflix, the largest provider of
commercial streaming video programming in United States, already stored
hundreds of millions of such events.
In 2012, research showed that Americans watched more movies legally delivered via the Internet than on physical formats like Blu-Ray discs or DVDs, and as we all know increasing new generation use more illegal method, so the audience group should be even larger. While the traditional method can only provide us audience rating which says only good or bad of one show, the new method will tell us what element in a show is attractive.
Using the NoSQL database Apache Cassandra, Matt Pfeil, co-founder and VP of Customer Solutions at big data software company DataStax, which worked with Netflix to implement Cassandra, explained that this is the first time that programming has been developed with the aid of big data algorithms.
But is this telling audience that technology knows all? Andrew Leonard, a Salon reporter considers some of the implications of TV in the era of Big Data:
“The interesting and potentially troubling question is how a reliance on Big Data might funnel craftsmanship in particular directions. What happens when directors approach the editing room armed with the knowledge that a certain subset of subscribers are opposed to jump cuts or get off on gruesome torture scenes or just want to see blow jobs. Is that all we’ll be offered? We’ve seen what happens when news publications specialize in just delivering online content that maximizes page views. It isn’t always the most edifying spectacle. Do we really want creative decisions about how a show looks and feels to be made according to an algorithm counting how many times we’ve bailed out of other shows?”
However, what would weaken Netflix and others is a 2011 report by McKinsey that depict a fundamental disadvantage, although the demand outpacing supply by 50 per cent in North America by 2018, people who are able to efficiently transition Big Data by digging deep and finding out the meaning behind the numbers would have the ability to tailor towards consumers in a particular perspective.
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