Actually the thing that's infuriating about Netflix and many of its competitors is the weak or no support for deep linking to content. We don't need channels to curate content if bloggers, etc. can do it themselves.
I think the technology and its usability wasn't the problem.
The problem was, nobody thought people would be so crazy and store their stuff on the other side of the planet (performance) on the servers of complete strangers (security).
Dropbox doesn't really suffer from the first problem since you keep a local copy of everything and people have been trusting complete strangers with their email and bank account details since forever.
That's the most important part, and the mostly often ignored in HN discussions
It's the same with the difference between the Apple I and Appple II