Qwikster
What Would Be Is No Longer – and that’s a good thing

And we are back to being just Netflix.

Netflix DVD staying

After a few months of wacky and idiotic decisions that have cost the online streaming/DVD rental by mail company a lot of value and almost a million subscribers, Netflix is back to being just Netflix.

Back a few weeks ago, Netflix announced they were spinning off their DVD rental service to a separate site called Qwikster. Whatever prompted this split [my guess is the studios and license owners had a small, but significant part in this], it wasn’t the most thought out of decisions. Two webs sites. Two logins. Who came up with this idea?

Other Missteps

It seems that this once “can’t do no wrong” company has made a lot of major changes to its business, that personally didn’t need to be made. I’ve already blogged about their price hikes and separation of DVD and streaming subscription plans. But this next misstep is one that’s confusing, to say the least.

There was a saved list at the bottom of the instant queue where movies that were not available could be added, and when they became available, would be added to your instant queue. Well, while this list is still available, it’s not being shown on the Netflix queue. To the average user, it’s gone and appears to be deleted. They did address the decision in an official blog post, but that doesn’t help the subscribers that used that list now that it’s effectively gone.

Turns out that if you do some digging, you will find a web site called Feed Fliks that can show you this list.

The question is: why would Netflix keep this data yet take away the ability to see it on their own site? Baffled is the nicest word I can use here. Fucking with your loyal users is the term I would equate this decision with. While they may have their reasons, it’s just a dumb decision.

So now that they have corrected some of their illogical decisions, can they return to the glory they once knew? Guess we’ll just have to wait and see if they can stabilize their business model – and hopefully without losing more subscribers in the process