Websites to help select a Netflix movie
Netflix, Hulu, and similar websites have put a plethora of movies and television shows at our fingertips. Now, with such a large selection to choose from, we have the problem of abundance. We have access to so many movies and shows that we do not know which to watch! For each show and movie, we can find innumerable (often conflicting) opinions on the internet. An article from mic.com entitled “Finally, the Perfect Website to Help You Pick Netflix Movies” by Jordan Valinsky discusses three different websites that have been created to help the indecisive and the overwhelmed decide what to watch on Netflix.
Using what we learned in class, we can classify the three pages as “authority” or “hub” pages. An authority page, in this case, is a page that has been referred to by a lot of other pages. On the other hand, a hub page serves as a good list.
Flix Roulette allows users enter a few preferences such as director, actor, range of acceptable Netflix rating, and type of entertainment (movie or show). Flix Roulette then randomly selects for the user a movie or show that fits the criteria. Although Flix Roulette would eventually provide links to every movie on Netflix within the parameters entered by the user, it would never provide a single list of multiple movies or shows. I think it would probably be a hub page. Although practically it is not a list, Flix Roulette provides information on a litany of movies or shows. It is difficult to determine the authority score of Flix Roulette because I cannot tell how many other websites refer to it.
Another website mentioned in the article is Flick Surfer. Unlike Flix Roulette, Flick Surfer provides a sortable list of options based on inputs from the user Along with a search for a specific, title, director, or actor, and filters for form of entertainment and genre, Flick Surfer allows users to select the way that the list is sorted. Options for sorting are ratings on IMDB, ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, ratings on Netflix, an average of the three sources, and date added. Flick Surfer is a good hub page because it provides an easily accessed list that links to many other webpages. At the bottom of Flick Surfer is a link to the Twitter page of the creator of the site. The fact that the person running the site is actively involved on social media suggests that Flick Surfer may have a good authority score.
The website that the article seems most enamored with is What is on Netflix. What is on Netflix combines aspects from both Flix Roulette and Flick Surfer, providing lists to movies in order of rating from the site of the user’s choice (Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB, or Metacritic), in order of most recently released, or in order of most recently added to Netflix. What is on Netflix is a good hub page. The hub scores of What is on Netflix and Flick Surfer are probably approximately equal, because they offer a similar set of filtering and sorting options. What is on Netflix also provides a list of articles in which it was mentioned, giving a better idea of its authority score (at least 11). It also has options to tweet, to pin, to like and to share, which implies it has an even higher authority score than 11. I expect that What is on Netflix has the highest sum of authority and hub scores of the three websites mentioned.
If we used the sum of hub score and authority score to rank the best websites from which to get Netflix recommendations, I think that What is on Netflix would earn the highest ranking. The usability of the website, as praised in the mic.com article, is likely one of the main reasons that What is on Netflix got such a high authority score from so many articles recommending it. This agreement between people’s opinions and the high scores attests to the validity of ranking webpages based on hub and authority scores.
Article: http://mic.com/articles/102668/finally-the-perfect-website-to-help-you-pick-netflix-movies
Flix Roulette: http://netflixroulette.net/
Flick Surfer: http://flicksurfer.com/#/
What is on Netflix: http://whatisonnetflix.com/