Netflix has launched a new website featuring Top 10 rankings for its library of content that features a new way of measuring a movie or show’s popularity.
The video streaming giant has traditionally given little away when it comes to metrics linked to its content. What we did know was that a “view” on Netflix counted as two minutes of time spent watching a title. Now, however, Netflix is ranking content by the total number of hours watched.
The new Top 10 website will be updated every Tuesday and offers weekly global and country lists of the most popular titles on its service.
The lists are based on hours viewed from Monday to Sunday the previous week for both original and licensed titles, Pablo Perez De Rosso, Netflix’s vice president for content strategy, said in a blog post announcing the new website.
“We’ve broken the lists down as follows: global Top 10 lists for Films (English), TV (English), Films (non-English) and TV (non-English), as well as rankings for over 90 countries,” the executive said, adding that the website is currently available in English and Spanish, with more languages coming in 2022.
The Top 10 rows that came to Netflix’s main site last year will now also be based on hours viewed, with the aim of making it easier than ever to find out what other people are watching.
Perez De Rosso acknowledged that it’s hard to come up with a universally popular metric for measuring streaming success, but said hours viewed seems like a strong indicator of a movie or TV show’s popularity.
He said he recognized that hours viewed “does favor longer series and films,” adding that as it’s “hard to capture the nuances of different types of entertainment with one metric, Netflix will also occasionally publish speciality lists, for example, top documentary features or reality shows, which our members love but may appear less prominently in these lists.”
Besides allowing you to see what’s popular and where, Netflix’s new Top 10 website also offers ideas for new stuff to watch. Alternatively, you can dive into Digital Trends’ website, which has lots of regularly updated recommendation lists for Netflix (and other video streaming services), including the 50 best movies on Netflix right now, the best shows, the best movies for kids, and the best British TV shows.
