Reed Hastings

Today in Tech: Should Microsoft sell Bing?

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* With just a 27% share of the U.S. search market, Reuters argues Microsoft should find a buyer for online search engine Bing. (Reuters via The New York Times)

* Google is revising its approach towards Google + users who for one reason or another don't use their full, real names MORE

What Facebook means to Netflix

While new board member Reed Hastings can help Facebook, the social network has a lot to offer Netflix as well.

FORTUNE -- Netflix Chief Executive Reed Hastings made a strategically brilliant move for the business Friday when he announced plans to join Facebook's board of directors. Since it was founded in 1997, Netflix (NFLX) has risen from a start-up that took down Blockbuster with its red-enveloped videos by mail to the MORE

Why Microsoft needs to buy Netflix

By Kevin Kelleher, contributor

For all the reasons a Nokia merger wouldn't work, Netflix can be the core of Microsoft's answer to Apple's iCloud -- and provide Ballmer a canny co-CEO.

FORTUNE -- Poor Steve Ballmer. Standing at the helm of one of the computer age's biggest success stories while its brand withers and its stock languishes at the same level it traded at in 1998. Shareholders are increasingly unhappy with him. MORE

Netflix buys its first original show, starring Kevin Spacey

Reed Hastings' disruption tour continues as Netflix weighs ploughing its profits into an original series. "It's not TV, it's HBO" may soon be "It's not HBO, it's Netflix."

Update: 24 hours later, it's official. "Netflix has committed to a minimum of 26 episodes," the press release reads, of "House of Cards." That sounds like 2 seasons worth, and it should begin, um, "airing" in late 2012. Kevin Spacey and David Fincher MORE

Stream this! How Netflix chooses for you

The company uses a mix of subscriber information, user ratings, rentals, and cool computer algorithms to predict what kinds of entertainment you might enjoy streaming.

Back to Reed Hastings: Leader of the pack

Reed Hastings: Leader of the pack

Executives from Silicon Valley to Hollywood to Wall Street admires his savvy persistence - and his company's cool culture. The secret to the Netflix CEO's success? He never stops looking over his shoulder.

Reed Hastings isn't supposed to be here -- not on a list of the year's top businesspeople, and certainly not on the cover of Fortune. His DVD-by-mail company, Netflix, was supposed to have flamed out by now, a MORE

Box office boffo for brainiacs: The Netflix Prize

How To Recommend Movies (and Win $1 million)

It was like the machine learning world's version of "American Idol" Monday in New York:  A seven-man multinational group dubbed BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos was awarded $1 million by Netflix (NFLX) CEO Reed Hastings as the winners of the Netflix Prize.

Cooked up three years ago by Hastings, the Netflix Prize challenged all comers to improve the recommendation technology used by the online movie rental MORE

The Netflix Playbook

Finally, a Powerpoint presentation worth reading

It isn't often that I get convinced to read through a slide deck 128 images long. But after the fourth startup CEO, in this case Jonathan Sposato, CEO of online photo-editing service Picnik brought it to my attention; I sat down to give "Reference Guide on our Freedom & Responsibility Culture" a gander.

The slide deck, which can be found here, contains the distilled thinking of MORE

Netflix's Web-based future