A Grotta

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Netflix: Finding the Next Hit Business Model
A Grotta
Posted on December 9, 2015 at 5:46 pm
Companies struggle to successfully reinvent biz model once, let alone twice in 5 years. Netflix’s successful shifts -- from DVDs to streaming to originals -- have largely been in response to to trends impacting its content supply chain.

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On December 13, 2015, A Grotta commented on Amazon Web Services: Seeing Through the Clouds :

Slightly misleading saying that AWS is half of Amazon’s operating income considering how unprofitable the company is — 178M on 89B?

Anyways, this is a really interesting read. Just further underscores Amazon’s power today — not just the world’s largest retailer but also essentially powering the internet. The competitive issues here are super interesting. I know that Netflix (primary competitor to Amazon’s video offering) runs on AWS. I wonder how many retailers/other companies that Amazon competes with do the same?

On December 13, 2015, A Grotta commented on GrubHub: The Alignment is…SEAMLESS! :

have, the fact that I can’t have a tasty meal recommended to me based on mood / day and time is baffling.

On December 13, 2015, A Grotta commented on GrubHub: The Alignment is…SEAMLESS! :

Full disclosure — I am somewhat of a Seamless ‘super-user,’ would probably use it 10x a week in NYC and am deeply disappointed by the offering in Boston. At the end of the day, I think it has way more potential than the Postmates of the world (which get traction among the market cognoscenti because their product is something that appeals to well-off individuals who have more disposable income).

Vesal’s point regarding the delivery force is critical if GrubHub/Seamless is going to expand out of high-density urban environments where delivery makes lots of economic sense for restaurants. If Boston is too spread out to justify restaurants for this, just imagine what its like in the South and Midwest.

Final point, I think GrubHub/Seamless has really dropped the ball in terms of recommendations / personalization. This will be critical as scale increases — who has the time to scroll through 5000 restaurants?!
Considering the amount of data points they

On December 13, 2015, A Grotta commented on BuzzFeed is Effective AND THE REASONS WHY WILL SHOCK YOU :

Great post, Mark. BuzzFeed is interesting — such an enigma and some might say a giant metaphor for our current digital age where all traditional signifiers of quality/genre are meaningless (e.g. Ryan Adams covering Taylor Swift). Did you know that Jonah Peretti was essentially a Marxist media critic in a past life: http://www.critical-theory.com/from-deleuze-to-lolcats-the-story-of-the-buzzfeed-guy/

Anyways, what I think will be super interesting about Buzzfeed is how it plays with platforms such as Facebook, particularly as they move to become one-stop content shops (Facebook Instant Articles that don’t even link to publisher sites). Check out this article/writer if you have the chance: http://www.theawl.com/2015/07/in-no-charts