Netflix Reportedly Doing Away With Streaming Feature

Netflix is dropping one of the features that made it stand out while customers were browsing. Users have likely seen the percentage value listed beside titles on Netflix indicating how well the movie or show matches their personal tastes – the "match percentage." According to a report by The New York Times, Netflix is discontinuing that feature soon.

Netflix has long tried to find unique, hyper-specific ways to suggest content to users based on their personal tastes – even before streaming was available, when Netflix was still a mail-order DVD service. In recent years, the company has done this with a "match percentage" displayed beside titles, estimating how much that movie or show matches that user's tastes based on their viewing history as well as the data they have input voluntarily. Particularly strong matches were generally displayed in green, while lower ratings were displayed in gray. Now, that percentage will disappear, and Netflix will rely more on descriptive tags.

The descriptive tags for movies and TV shows are not new either. Users have likely seen Netflix sub-categories or title descriptions that say things like "visually striking movies," "award-winning dark movies," or "20th-century period pieces." Netflix has reportedly decided that these are more helpful and reliable for users, and they will be the basis of recommendations going forward. The company reportedly has a staff of 30 people with the job of creating and assigning these tags.

Netflix reportedly has about 3,000 tags, though some are admittedly obscure and reduntant. Senior tagger Sherrie Gulmahamad explained how nitty-gritty the use of these tags can get. She said: "Let's start with something that's been bubbling up from the analysts doing all of our tagging. We have 'falling in love' versus 'finding love,' and we also have 'looking for love.' Do we think we need to squish these down into one tag? Or do we think that they're nuanced and there is a difference between them?"

Netflix executive Allan Donald explained why the company believes these tags will do more good for users. He said: "Imagine magazines that have no cover lines, and there were just photographs on them. Tags make as much of a difference as a cover line in that snap 'this is for me' decision."

It's unclear when Netflix's percentage matching display will disappear, or which features will disappear with it, such as the simple thumbs-up or thumbs-down rating system. In the meantime, fans should be prepared to be more particular as they browse based on tags alone.