Netflix is ​​quietly removing this feature, will you miss it?

Do you know the function surprise me from Netflix? If the answer is negative, it is now too late to try it.

In the section “How to use Surprise Me to watch titles randomly” from the Netflix Help Center, we learn that the feature “not available since January 2023”. The SVOD platform therefore removed this option a few weeks ago, launched in April 2021 under the name “Launch a title”.

According to a Netflix spokeswoman quoted by the wall street journalthe American firm felt that the functionality was not used enough by its subscribers to justify its presence, and too bad for those who had used it so far. “We will continue to explore other methods to give members more options and ways to explore and discover the content they want to watch”the video-on-demand streaming service added.

Netflix won’t surprise you anymore

Analyst at LightShed Partners, Rich Greenfield explains that “Netflix tries a lot of things, iterates fast, and kills the things that don’t work”. It is therefore not surprising that the function surprise me has been shelved after almost two years without having succeeded in imposing itself on the public, who seem to prefer to choose the content they want to watch themselves.

When this feature was launched, Cameron Johnson, director of product innovation at Netflix, was selling what he then called Launch a title : “We’re not always in the mood to make decisions. Whether it’s Friday night after a long week, or when our fridge is full but we don’t know what to eat, or even on family movie night when no one can get enough OK. It has happened to all of us. Sometimes we only want one thing: to sit comfortably in front of Netflix and let ourselves be carried away. That’s why we created “Launch a title”, a simple and practical feature to discover new programs”.

The option did not offer a series or a movie on a completely random basis, but according to what you had watched previously. She could also launch content that was started but not finished, or a series or movie on your favorites list. So, are you one of the subscribers to whom surprise me will miss?

Source : The Wall Street Journal