Tue, September 20, 2011
The One Thing I Don't Understand About the Netflix Split—11:59 PM
It seems like a pretty terrible idea, and nobody seems to like it, but it won't cost any more (than it already does due to the price hikes this summer). My guess is that after the initial shock blows over, nobody will think much about it. As long as the streaming deals with content partners don't completely dry up, there will be some customers who sign up for streaming-only, some who prefer DVD-only, and some who enjoy both – just like today.
What I don't understand is dividing up the queue and rating functionality between the two services. Different brands and names, fine, but the ease of finding movies and tagging them for later viewing (whether you wait for the disc or just stream it) has always been the main thing Netflix has going for it. Hell, their ratings and movie suggestions are so important they spent a million dollars tracking down a better recommendation algorithm. Why diminish that benefit by forcing people to rate movies on two separate systems, and search two separate sites to find a movie they want to watch? The rest of this decision is boggling but not that big a deal – splitting up the review/recommendation and queuing process has the potential to create frustration and missed opportunities that may lead to an irrecoverable loss of subscribers.
"AC" — Wed, 9/21/11 2:01pm
Except for having to now say "let me add that to my Qwikster queue." Ugh!
(by the way, your comment system doesn't work with Chrome.)
Bee Boy — Wed, 9/21/11 5:51pm
I'm posting this comment from Chrome. I think I may have had to hit submit twice after doing the in-situ-login in the comments area, but my comment showed up okay. Sorry Chrome doesn't like it, but considering it's a browser I only use when I need to visit a site that has Flash, I can't say its bugs are a major priority just yet.
(Around here, even major priorities like the ATGoNFP column are three days late, so you may have to bear with me!)