Netflix has a huge presence globally and they have managed to get a sizeable catalog of content. The wealth of choices on platforms like Netflix would confuse a typical individual and they are trying something to remedy that.
Netflix has been testing the shuffle button on user profiles in the past few days. This seems like a limited test being conducted by the company.
Interesting new feature @netflix … but what kind of insane person just says, “yolo, let’s spin the Netflix wheel of fortune” pic.twitter.com/6WDJrmd7pG
— Turner Levison (@TurnerLevison) August 18, 2020
Why does my Netflix have a ‘shuffle play’ option? Who would ever use this and why?
— Siphokazi Kayana (@SiphokaziKayana) August 13, 2020
The shuffle play button appears on the “Who’s watching Netflix” page beneath your profile. This button is showing up on the Netflix app for TVs. Judging from the reaction on social media sites like Twitter, some people love it and others are just confused.
As you know, Netflix uses machine learning and AI to personalize movie recommendations and no two profiles show the same content. When you press it, Netflix will randomly play content it thinks you’ll like. This could be something you were currently watching or something you saved to watch or a title similar to something you’ve already watched.
Netflix told TechCrunch that the idea behind this feature is to help its members quickly and easily find content tailored to their taste. They also said that they started to roll out these new tests to members worldwide last month and only to TV devices. They are yet to make a decision as to when they will make it public since they need to collect feed back from the current tests.
This is not the first time the company has tried to make the shuffle concept work. Last year, they tried a random shuffle button on their Android app (ver 7.6.0 build 19 34157 specifically). This allowed you to jump into a random episode of popular shows on the streaming site. Last month, Netflix tried another variation of the shuffle button called “play something” and they confirmed all of these variations.
