People

After discontinuing free trials, Netflix plans StreamFest promotion

The streaming service is looking to first test a free weekend in India.

After discontinuing free trials, Netflix plans StreamFest promotion

Anyone who wants to keep watching after the conclusion of the two-day event will have to sign up for a regular account.

Photo: Thibault Penin

Netflix is looking to promote its service with a 48-hour free streaming event, confirmed COO Greg Peters during the company's Q3 2020 earnings call Tuesday afternoon. Netflix is looking to first test the free streaming offer in India, and may bring it to other countries in the following months.

"We think that giving everyone in a country access to Netflix for free for a weekend could be a great way to expose a bunch of new people to the amazing stories that we have," Peters said. "Really creating an event, and hopefully get a bunch of those folks to sign up."

Protocol was first to report earlier Tuesday that a recent version of the company's Android app includes mentions of a promotional event called StreamFest that's scheduled for Dec. 4 (hat tip to Mishaal Rahman). A Netflix spokesperson confirmed the plans for the event Tuesday morning, telling Protocol: "We're always looking at different marketing promotions to attract new members and give them a great Netflix experience."

If it happens as teased in the app's code, StreamFest will be accessible via any device that Netflix is currently available on, and users won't have to enter their credit card number to access free streaming. "We don't need any payment details — just your love and undivided attention," according to a text string found in the app. However, anyone who wants to keep watching after the conclusion of the two-day event will have to sign up for a regular account.

There seems to be some limitation on the number of people able to access the promotion, as one of the in-app text string informs users that "Netflix StreamFest is at capacity." Netflix frequently tests new features with a subset of its audience; limiting access could be one way to test StreamFest metrics against other forms of promotion.

Netflix's plans to launch StreamFest surface just days after the company discontinued 30-day free trials in the U.S. The event is similar to the way premium TV networks like HBO and Showtime have been promoting their programming for years. Showtime, for instance, was available for free to Comcast Xfinity cable subscribers for 48 hours in August.

Netflix's Q3 results came in below the company's already-cautious forecast. During the quarter, Netflix added 2.2 million paying subscribers worldwide, including less than 200,000 in North America. Executives attributed much of that to the company's outsized growth during the early months of COVID, and said that Netflix already had added more subscribers during the first nine months of 2020 than during all of 2019.

The pandemic also affected Netflix's production schedule, but co-CEO Ted Sarandos said that the company was on schedule to finish 150 productions by the end of the year. "We're back to near-steady state in physical production," Sarandos said. "Materially, we're back in business."

This post was updated throughout following Netflix's Q3 2020 earnings call.

 Janko Roettgers

Janko Roettgers (@jank0) is a senior reporter at Protocol, reporting on the shifting power dynamics between tech, media, and entertainment, including the impact of new technologies. Previously, Janko was Variety's first-ever technology writer in San Francisco, where he covered big tech and emerging technologies. He has reported for Gigaom, Frankfurter Rundschau, Berliner Zeitung, and ORF, among others. He has written three books on consumer cord-cutting and online music and co-edited an anthology on internet subcultures. He lives with his family in Oakland.

netflix earnings streaming streamfest
Fintech

Judge Zia Faruqui is trying to teach you crypto, one ‘SNL’ reference at a time

His decisions on major cryptocurrency cases have quoted "The Big Lebowski," "SNL," and "Dr. Strangelove." That’s because he wants you — yes, you — to read them.

The ways Zia Faruqui (right) has weighed on cases that have come before him can give lawyers clues as to what legal frameworks will pass muster.

Photo: Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images

“Cryptocurrency and related software analytics tools are ‘The wave of the future, Dude. One hundred percent electronic.’”

That’s not a quote from "The Big Lebowski" — at least, not directly. It’s a quote from a Washington, D.C., district court memorandum opinion on the role cryptocurrency analytics tools can play in government investigations. The author is Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui.

Keep Reading Show less
Veronica Irwin

Veronica Irwin (@vronirwin) is a San Francisco-based reporter at Protocol covering fintech. Previously she was at the San Francisco Examiner, covering tech from a hyper-local angle. Before that, her byline was featured in SF Weekly, The Nation, Techworker, Ms. Magazine and The Frisc.

cryptocurrency blockchain bitcoin lawsuit
sponsored content
Sponsored Content

How is technological innovation breaking down barriers and increasing access to financial services?

The financial technology transformation is driving competition, creating consumer choice, and shaping the future of finance. Hear from seven fintech leaders who are reshaping the future of finance, and join the inaugural Financial Technology Association Fintech Summit to learn more.

Keep Reading Show less
FTA
The Financial Technology Association (FTA) represents industry leaders shaping the future of finance. We champion the power of technology-centered financial services and advocate for the modernization of financial regulation to support inclusion and responsible innovation.
sponsored sponsored content
amazon web services
Enterprise

AWS CEO: The cloud isn’t just about technology

As AWS preps for its annual re:Invent conference, Adam Selipsky talks product strategy, support for hybrid environments, and the value of the cloud in uncertain economic times.

Photo: Noah Berger/Getty Images for Amazon Web Services

AWS is gearing up for re:Invent, its annual cloud computing conference where announcements this year are expected to focus on its end-to-end data strategy and delivering new industry-specific services.

It will be the second re:Invent with CEO Adam Selipsky as leader of the industry’s largest cloud provider after his return last year to AWS from data visualization company Tableau Software.

Keep Reading Show less
Donna Goodison

Donna Goodison (@dgoodison) is Protocol's senior reporter focusing on enterprise infrastructure technology, from the 'Big 3' cloud computing providers to data centers. She previously covered the public cloud at CRN after 15 years as a business reporter for the Boston Herald. Based in Massachusetts, she also has worked as a Boston Globe freelancer, business reporter at the Boston Business Journal and real estate reporter at Banker & Tradesman after toiling at weekly newspapers.

aws amazon web services cloud computing analytics data analytics adam selipsky

Farewell from Protocol

Image: Protocol

We launched Protocol in February 2020 to cover the evolving power center of tech. It is with deep sadness that just under three years later, we are winding down the publication.

As of today, we will not publish any more stories. All of our newsletters, apart from our flagship, Source Code, will no longer be sent. Source Code will be published and sent for the next few weeks, but it will also close down in December.

Keep Reading Show less
Bennett Richardson

Bennett Richardson ( @bennettrich) is the president of Protocol. Prior to joining Protocol in 2019, Bennett was executive director of global strategic partnerships at POLITICO, where he led strategic growth efforts including POLITICO's European expansion in Brussels and POLITICO's creative agency POLITICO Focus during his six years with the company. Prior to POLITICO, Bennett was co-founder and CMO of Hinge, the mobile dating company recently acquired by Match Group. Bennett began his career in digital and social brand marketing working with major brands across tech, energy, and health care at leading marketing and communications agencies including Edelman and GMMB. Bennett is originally from Portland, Maine, and received his bachelor's degree from Colgate University.

machine learning
Enterprise

Why large enterprises struggle to find suitable platforms for MLops

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, and as larger enterprises go from deploying hundreds of models to thousands and even millions of models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

Photo: artpartner-images via Getty Images

On any given day, Lily AI runs hundreds of machine learning models using computer vision and natural language processing that are customized for its retail and ecommerce clients to make website product recommendations, forecast demand, and plan merchandising. But this spring when the company was in the market for a machine learning operations platform to manage its expanding model roster, it wasn’t easy to find a suitable off-the-shelf system that could handle such a large number of models in deployment while also meeting other criteria.

Some MLops platforms are not well-suited for maintaining even more than 10 machine learning models when it comes to keeping track of data, navigating their user interfaces, or reporting capabilities, Matthew Nokleby, machine learning manager for Lily AI’s product intelligence team, told Protocol earlier this year. “The duct tape starts to show,” he said.

Keep Reading Show less
Kate Kaye

Kate Kaye is an award-winning multimedia reporter digging deep and telling print, digital and audio stories. She covers AI and data for Protocol. Her reporting on AI and tech ethics issues has been published in OneZero, Fast Company, MIT Technology Review, CityLab, Ad Age and Digiday and heard on NPR. Kate is the creator of RedTailMedia.org and is the author of "Campaign '08: A Turning Point for Digital Media," a book about how the 2008 presidential campaigns used digital media and data.

mlops ai machine learning
Latest Stories
Bulletins