If you have the Netflix app on your phone, chances are that it’s competing for your attention, not only with other streaming platforms, but with apps such as TikTok and Instagram. So it’s perhaps not surprising that the streaming giant is copying techniques that those social media platforms use. In other words, it’s making changes to get you scrolling and keep you there.
It’s the next step in Netflix’s strategy to create a social media experience within its app. To be clear, it’s not changing what it does, but it recognises the benefits of social media-type engagement with the app.
According to remarks made during an earnings call by Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters (via The Hollywood Reporter), the app will create space to further develop vertical video with the hope that it’ll attract more users to the app and encourage them to spend more time on it.
Vertical videos were introduced to the Netflix app in May 2025. Users around the world gained access to clips promoting its original titles. The buttons next to each clip let viewers save the title for later or go straight to the film or TV show. But other content, including clips of video podcasts – which are new to the platform – will soon join it. The platform has established partnerships with Spotify and iHeartMedia to share their podcast libraries.
Netflix is also focusing on developing its own projects. The website’s first original podcast, The White House by Michael Irvin, launched on 19 January. On 30 January, The Pete Davidson Show will debut on the website.
As Ted Sarandos, Netflix co-CEO, noted:
There’s never been more competition for creators, for consumer attention, for advertising and subscription dollars, the competitive lines around TV consumption are already blurring, TV is not what we grew up on. TV is now just about everything. The Oscars and the NFL are on YouTube… Apple’s competing for Emmys and Oscars, and Instagram is coming next.
It seems that in a world of increasingly blurred boundaries between media, social platforms and entertainment programmes, Netflix wants to shore up its position.