Netflix To Eliminate Profiles Feature

Donald Burr of Borg writes "One of my favorite features of Netflix, the video-rental-by-mail service, is 'profiles.' Profiles lets you create 'sub-accounts' for your friends/family, so that they can share in the video rental love. Each profile gets his/her own Netflix queue that he/she can manage with their own login/password. You can divide up how many movies get sent to you vs. the other profiles under your account. E.g. if you have a 6-out-at-once plan, you can choose to get 3 movies at a time, and have 3 other profiles each receive 1 movie. Unfortunately, the fun stops September 1, at which point Netflix is, for unknown reasons, going to terminate this feature. Why? To '...help us to continue to improve the Netflix website for all our customers.' Improvement indeed."

Comments

Now I get it

[Anonymous Coward]

I just called Netflix customer service to ask for clarification on how this helps improve the web site. The rep responded that they needed to free up programming space for better features, and that it's really a tiny, tiny percentage of people that use profiles to separate queues. (Slashdot and Gizmodo, the two sites I checked for reactions to this, are apparently chock full of tiny, tiny percentages.)

When I told her that I'm a programmer and I don't understand what it means to free up programming space, she was quiet for a moment and then said, "This is really a decision that they've already made, so it's not like they're going to change their minds."

I'm all for freeing up programming space. Statistics show that programming space will be all used up in the next 10 years if we don't start conserving it.

Re:Now I get it

[TooMuchToDo]

Netflix, 2008 -- "One profile should be enough for anyone"

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[j00r0m4nc3r]

Boiled peas?? Luxury! When I was young we got boiled SAND on airplanes. And we were thankful!

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[zippthorne]

Psah. We had to bring our own sand. Hot. And bags were strictly banned from flights, so you carried your sand in your hands.

And that's the way we likes'd it.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[Hognoxious]

"In order to provide a better service to you, our valued customer...", immediately I recoil, 'cause I know I'm just about to be hit with some sort of diminished service.

Come on, that's a sweeping generalisation.

They might just be going to charge you more.