Netflix Throws Down the Gauntlet to Competitors With a Top 10 Listings Website

Τransparency is always welcome but, this time, it’s not just about that, is it?

Netflix decided to finally release some interesting data about films and TV shows offered on its platform. Doing so when films like Red Notice get consumers’ attention can’t be a coincidence, can it? (Image: Netflix)

The company behind the most popular digital entertainment service in the world, Netflix, made a lot of headlines by doing something that was both unexpected and long overdue: it revealed a website, available to everyone, that lists its currently most popular films and TV shows based on hard data (which the company will also be sharing from now on). It is a stark departure from the approach Netflix used to follow in the past, which was — at different times — secretive, opaque, PR-driven or all of the above. As such, this new approach is welcome. It also serves… other purposes.

The website is called “Top 10 on Netflix” and its title is, well, self-explanatory. It presents the ten most popular movies and TV shows available on the service at the moment globally while also offering each country’s “Top 10” separately (the differences between those are probably worth a story on their own). English and foreign-language films and shows also get separate Top 10 listings, so… yeah, that is a lot of information to go through. What is even more important, though, is the data accompanying it: Netflix is putting out there a new metric, “total hours viewed” for each and…