Fast Laughs — Netflix's Attempt at Increasing User Engagement
Short-form content is the next big thing in entertainment
The recent rise of short-form content has been nothing less than mind-boggling. A row of new releases from established media and entertainment companies suggests that short-form content could be the next ‘it’ thing in the entertainment industry. The Chinese giant, Tiktok was the first one to implement the concept of short-form content on its platform. Seeing its blockbuster success, tech giants such as Google and Facebook have also incorporated it into their respective products. Google introduced Youtube shorts and Instagram started with reels as their version of the concept. Both of these releases have brought in encouraging results for the companies.
Netflix joined the list in March of 2021 when it introduced Fast Laughs on its platform. Patrick Flemming, the Director of Product Innovation at Netflix introduced it in his blog as —
Fast Laughs offers a full-screen feed of funny clips from our big comedy catalog including films (Murder Mystery), series (Big Mouth), sitcoms (The Crew) and stand-up from comedians like Kevin Hart and Ali Wong.
In a separate blog, I discussed how Netflix might be missing a huge opportunity to increase its user engagement. On the contrary, this move by Netflix of introducing Fast Laughs could be quite brilliant. On the face of it, Fast Laughs seems like a great way for viewers to view short clips from their favorite shows and movies on Netflix and that is how Netflix has marketed it as. But, if one observes closely, there are multiple ways in which this strategy can help the entertainment leader boost its user engagement numbers. In this blog, I will unpack Netflix’s Fast Laughs and see how it can increase the average amount of time a user spends on the platform.
1. Viewership of short-form content —
Short-form content helps attract those with a short attention span, which is why it is so effective on social media. It is easier to read and watch and, in many cases, is easier to access on a mobile phone. All of these could be why viewers are steadily moving towards it. With the introduction of Fast Laughs, Netflix hopes to provide users with bite-sized content which is extremely easy to consume. With Fast Laughs having a scrollable interface, much like the other platforms, there is a possibility that users don’t realize the amount of time they are spending on the platform. The shorter clips would also be a less cognizant load for the users, further helping Netflix to retain viewers on the platform.
The selection of ‘comedy’ as the theme of these short videos is interesting for a couple of reasons — Firstly, it is one of the most popular genres out there today and is highly engaging because people related to it, and secondly, comedy is likely to be present in most shows and movies (unless its a super intense drama, of course). So, it is easy to include most titles in the Fast Laugh space in the form of short clips of those “funny” scenes.
2. An option to play the title —
In my opinion, Fast Laughs is a great way to remind the audience of the older titles which are available on the platform. When a viewer sees a funny scene from an old show, the viewer might want to go back and watch that particular episode. It is also possible that the viewers come across a scene from a show or a movie that they’ve been wanting to watch for a while but had just forgotten about it. So this can be a great way to remind them of those titles as well.
This is precisely what Netflix would want — viewers staying on the platform to watch more and so, they make it extremely convenient for the user to jump from the “funny scene” in Fast Laughs to the actual show or movie. There is a ‘Play’ button on the bottom right corner of the screen which is easy to spot because of the familiar usage of the icon. Thus, there is practically no chance of losing the viewer in the transition process between Fast Laughs and the actual title. Also, it is important to understand that a view like this is usually very sudden and instinctive. So lesser the barrier for the viewer to stay on the platform, the higher the chances of them engaging with the content.
3. An option to add to ‘My List’
Another option Netflix provides within Fast Laughs is the ability for the viewer to add the title to their watch list so that they can get back to it later. Again, the icon used for it is very straightforward and extremely intuitive to understand.
An interesting thing to notice here is the placement of the ‘My List’ button with respect to the ‘Play’ button. The ‘My List’ button is placed at the very top of the column of buttons which almost gives me the sense that Netflix might be envisioning Fast Laughs as a way to just either introduce or remind the viewers of titles and hope they get back to it later. While this did not quite make sense to me initially, I can see what they are going for when I give it some thought. People are on Fast Laughs because they don’t have time or the patience to commit to a longer piece of content. So the likelihood of them directly switching to the show or movie is pretty low even if it is not zero. Instead, they would like to plant this seed of thought in the viewers' heads and hope that the viewers come back later to watch it.
This is a great example of two things —
- Generating user engagement out of nothing: If there was no ‘My List button’, it is likely that viewers would have wanted to remember the name of the title to watch later but would have forgotten it, thus causing Netflix to lose out on watch-time.
- User Interface Design: I am sure a ton of research must have gone into deciding the positions of these buttons and where they would give the highest probability of the viewers interacting with them.
4. An option to share
Viewers can find a button to share the scenes they like and find funny with friends and family. When the users click on the ‘Share’ button, a prompt opens up which provides the viewers with a list of platforms they can use to share the clip. This button brings the social aspect into play where the more people know about these funny scenes the more they are likely to come on the platform and use the two buttons mentioned above. So I personally see this as a tertiary feature that is there to support and help viewers get to the other two buttons. We have already seen the effectiveness of sharing these short-form videos from the popularity of Instagram reels. So, if Fast Laughs comes even close to being as effective as Instagram reels, Netflix would be pretty happy with the user engagement numbers.
Overall, I think Fast Laughs is a pretty solid attempt by Netflix to increase the amount of time users spend on the platform. The fact that they market it as something that is done for the viewers makes it even more interesting. I am curious to see where they go with this and how successful it becomes as compared to Instagram reels and Youtube shorts.
