HBO Max getting rid of “endless scroll,” plans to have “swipey” interface

Think you have a lot of streaming services in your life? Here comes HBO Max, which is coming out in May. As someone who has subscribed to every major streaming service released so far, from Netflix to Apple TV+ to Disney+, it’s become difficult to keep up.

The folks behind HBO Max — Chief Technology Officer Jeremy Legg and General manager of Direct-to-Consumer Andy Forssell — filled us in on what to expect from the next big streaming service at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

What makes HBO Max stand out from the rest of the pack? Well, there’s the content, to start. Beating Disney’s nostalgia-driven stuff will be hard, but HBO Max will have both familiar and original shows, among them Friends, which can’t hurt. Although at $15 per month, will people pay a premium for access?

In order to give the service an edge, HBO Max is rethinking the user interface, according to Legg. He’s hoping to get rid of the mundane “endless scroll” that dominates a lot of streaming services in favor of a more “swipey” function friendly for mobile users.

Dating apps have that function, why not streaming services?

There’s also the matter of the HBO Max rollout. Forssel wasn’t specific, but he promise that bundles were coming. “We’ll absolutely do that,” he said. “Bundling, when it’s done right, is good for consumers and it’s good for people doing the bundle. It makes things stickier. You can bet that we’ll be aggressive.”

As for subscriber goals, HBO Max is aiming to 50 million households signed up in the first five years, although Forssell is mindful that it’s about more than just raw numbers. “The symbology is more important — we need to matter,” he said. “You do that by a count of how many people are obviously paying every month for the service. But you also do it through engagement. … It needs to matter to people and they need to use it, so we have some pretty stringent internal goals there.”

Finally, the team sounds confident that they can avoid first-day issues of the kind Disney+ experienced when it dropped. Good luck, everyone.

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h/t Deadline