The digital revolution has completely changed the way we buy and rent movies. Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Google and other on-demand entertainment service providers have made the brick-and-mortar video stores irrelevant. In July 2018, in Bend, Oregon, the last standing Blockbuster store shut its doors for good. That’s quite a comedown

I’ve previously written a lot on data mining in the abstract; now, I want to start taking you through some practical applications. Welcome to the fascinating world of the recommendation engine- this post will walk through the concepts, and later posts will teach you how to implement your own. What

Back in 2013, the Staples Center sold out in under an hour, setting what must be some unofficial record for ticket sales. However, people weren’t buying tickets to see the Lakers or the Kings play. The center was actually hosting the League of Legends Championship. For those of you who

Two undoubtedly huge trends have been dominated our news roster this week- augmented reality, and the Internet of Things. It’s becoming ever more apparent that these two fields of technological development are going to shape how we live, work and think in the coming years. In augmented reality, MagicLeap’s imaginative

Netflix’s growth over the last seven years has led to the provider of on-demand Internet streaming media, utilize ‘robust and scalable architecture’ in order to manage and process user viewing data. Following an announcement earlier this week that they’re open sourcing their data-analysis-on-Hadoop tools, Netflix have now revealed the need for

Data science revolutionaries Netflix have announced the onset of a Netflix-OSS project called Surus, through which it will open source some of its Hadoop data analyzing tools based on “internal user defined functions (UDF’s) that have broad adoption across Netflix.” The UDFs are slated for release over the next year

For years, companies have relied on business intelligence (BI) tools to drive strategy and identify opportunities based on historical data. However, in today’s fast-paced, data-driven economy, traditional BI often moves too slowly. Now, with the emergence of the Internet of Things and the demand for greater customer personalization, companies are

When Netflix forayed into original programming by committing $100 million for two seasons of House of Cards, it did so without even watching the pilot. What made Netflix so confident that it thought this decision was a no-brainer? Big Data! Netflix is, at its core, a data-driven company that diligently

We recently reported on how Netflix is using big data algorithms to power its recommendation system; now, a Netflix blog post highlights other ways in which the company is using big data behind the scenes to enrich its service. They’re putting the data to work largely to improve Quality of

Netflix is now undoubtedly an entertainment behemoth. In the first quarter of 2014 alone, they streamed 6.5 billion hours of TV and posted revenues of over a billion. Last week, CEO Reed Hastings and and Chief Product Officer Neil Hunt talked about the future of Netflix, and how they’re going