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Netflix Creates Qwikster For DVD Only Business
Frankie70 writes "Netflix CEO Reed Hastings just dropped a bombshell. In the wake of a rapid decline in Netflix's stock price last week, Hastings is taking a bold step by separating the DVD and video streaming services. The DVD-by-mail service will now be called Qwikster, and the streaming service will maintain the Netflix brand."
Wow, this is corporate stupidity at its finest. How exactly will this make more people subscribe? The only reason for this is that the CEO is freaked out about a stock drop and is overreacting. If anyone deserves to be fired it is the Netflix CEO. Everyone knows that the most powerful tool in business is brand recognition, and they are just throwing it away. From what I understand most of the people that dropped the DVD service did it because they weren't using it and it was just a good reason to do so. If anything this move will force more people to drop the DVD service as they will lose they que and no one will like having to pay 2 separate bills from same company. Way to go Netflix you just make a small problem much bigger by overreacting. I have a feeling that their stock is going to tank today.
This is just stupid, but the worst part is that, it seems to me like they didn't even think through all the implications of they way they are doing this. For example, take the following from the official netflix blog.
User asks: " If a film I search for on Netflix is not available for streaming, will the website still tell me if the DVD is available? Or must I search twice?"
CEO Reed Hastings responds: "ouch. You'd have to search the second place if we didn't have it in the first place."
Ouch? Are you serious? Ouch? To me, that reads like "hmmmm, we hadn't really thought about that".
You're going to cheapen youself with a 'ster' name? Really?
And the misspelling of Quick as Qwik... this has all the telltale signs of a 50yo CEO listening to 30yo consultants about what a 15-20yo would find "hip" and "cool". The cringe factor of doing it at least ten years too late is overwhelming.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The worst part is that EVERY legit streaming service has weak selection, Netflix is just a little less weak than the competitors (although if they lose Starz content we'll have to see). The major studios have been pretty hostile to streaming (even the original outrageous $8/movie streaming sites) and really we only have it so good now thanks to some rather fancy footwork by Netflix in the early days before the studios really took notice of them.
The DVD-by-mail service is the only sure thing Netflix has. It costs them more, but they're not beholden to studio assholes with it. They just buy disks retail and stick them in envelopes. The streaming business model puts way too much power in the hands of the studios and lets them dick over any competitors at will.
I read the internet for the articles.
I have been a member for about 6 years. My price has been going up slowly over that time for various reasons, but the recent jump due to streaming forced me to re-evaluate my monthly bill. To my surprise if I dropped streaming and blu-ray my monthly bill would almost be the same as when I first started (back before streaming or blu-ray).
That lead me to believe that their pricing has just been changed to reflect the cost of streaming, they took the initial approach of giving it away for free and now feel they have enough of a user base to start building a business. I can understand they are business and need to charge for the service they provide. So I reduced by DVD plan and kept the streaming plan so there was no monthly impact for me.
However, moving to two independent services is entirely different. As the email from the CEO stated by doing this they are breaking the integration between the DVD and Streaming services. As you stated it is now necessarily to manage both separately, meaning duplicated effort on two different websites. Not only does that waste the customers time it provides less incentive to use both systems. Integration is often what separates a good system from a great system, and that applies to many things we use in daily life and Netflix is no exception.
I can't believe that the Netflix team doesn't understand the value of integration, as much of their past work involved integrating both Steaming and DVD on the current website. I also know that the CEOs long term goal has always been online delivery (hence the name), so maybe this is that first step. But it sure doesn't feel like a step in the right direction, perhaps because the primary differentiator between Netflix and everyone else was the option for both streaming AND physical media in one service.
Having read the same comments you did, I think you're missing the point. Very few people are complaining that Netflix is doing the wrong thing by pushing streaming; lots of people are of the opinion that streaming is the future of content delivery. However, it's not ready to be the present of content delivery, and that's what most of us are lamenting. All those comments seem to end with "I'll see how things go, but if they screw up DVD rental, I'm out." I'm in the same boat - streaming is nice, but I signed up for Netflix for DVDs by mail.
For all that Steve Jobs believes it, Disc-based content delivery isn't dead, because no one has stepped up to provide the content and experience that at least some of us want. None of the fully licensed (**AA compliant) services provide equivalent features to the physical media experience: I want to be able to watch non-English-language content with subtitles, and I want full surround sound from my action movies. Some folks like to watch the "extra features" on the disc. None of us wants the bright red "buffering" screen. Since streaming services don't provide these features, we're not willing to switch, yet.
Presently, the best media-viewing experience possible is to obtain a physical DVD, rip it so that I can skip the out-of-date previews and commercials, and then watch it from a computer with appropriate A/V connections. Streaming has a lot of potential to let me skip a few of those steps, but they haven't realized that potential, yet.