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Netflix Kills Qwikster
gclef writes "Netflix has apparently decided that spinning off their DVD business into a separate organization was a bad idea after all, and is killing off the 'Qwikster' concept. From the article: 'Less than a month ago, the Netflix said it would split the DVD rental business off on a new website, to be called Qwikster. Subscribers howled at the move, saying they saw Netflix as a destination for movies in general and didn’t want to manage two accounts. “It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs,” CEO Reed Hastings said in the blog post.'"
It's obvious that NetFlix doesn't understand its customers anymore (if it ever did.) What I used to take as excellent customer focused strategy now seems to have been completely accidental. Every customer facing change they've made over the past few years has made the NetFlix experience progressively worse. At this point, I've had enough of their confused thrashing, and will still be cancelling my subscription. I checked my records, I joined NetFlix in 2004, and used to have a 3 DVD plan, but inf recent years have dropped to 1 DVD, then no DVDs, and now, no NetFlix.
Sorry I can't find a link to the article at the moment. It was the first not-insanely-unreasonable argument I had heard for the division. (although perhaps still a bit unreasonable.)
-- Give us your technology and we'll give you all the cow lips you want.
"We realised that Qwikster sounds like the sort of company that made spyware in the late 90s".
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
Of course, this creates even bigger outcry than price increases, and people stop talking about price issues and start talking about how they're going to cancel entirely when this happens. Then it doesn't, and they don't, but no one's really talking about price increases anymore. Cheap and effective counter to bad PR is worse PR that goes away!
Unfortunately "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" has a corollary, "never attribute to brilliant cunning that which is adequately explained by stupidity," so I can't quite bring myself to believe this.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
The increase in cost affected my service, as it caused me to get less service. The continued changes to the web site affected my service, because it made it more and more difficult to search for and find content I was interested in (regardless of whether it was DVDs or streaming. I'm not buying DVDs or Blu-rays, because it's just not that important to me to see movies. It was certainly nice to be able to enjoy the occaisional movie at home, without having to fight crowds at the theaters, but my life doesn't revolve around TV and movies (at least not anymore) so I can easily say goodbye to NetFlix and just not replace it with another service.
If their model works for you, then by all means, keep subscribing. It doesn't work for me though, not anymore, so I'm voting with my wallet.
Netflix subscribed to a management theory called "eating your own lunch." The idea is that any business, if you wait around long enough, will get mummified as you keep trying to protect the revenue generated by your ancient business model. The theory says that, as the big company keeps struggling to keep its moribund business alive, a younger, hungrier competitor with a slightly different business model will steal your lunch. So, the theory goes, you should eat your own lunch and embark on your own variant business models. That way, when the business world shifts, you'll still be in business.
The theory points to such past projects as the CD industry, Blockbuster, and others. The idea is that such industries failed because they were too wedded to their ideas to change.
The trouble is, Netflix went overboard. They had two different business models running perfectly smoothly side by side. There was no mummification, nothing preventing them from being innovative or seizing on the new streaming business. In fact, their DVD-by-mail business was helping them wield great power in the movie industry, and helping them to get deals for streaming content.
So if they were paying attention clearly, the only reason to kill off the DVD-by-mail business is if it was scaring off the customers, starving the company of funds, or somehow preventing innovation. None of those were true. I'm glad to see they came to their senses.
I just can't see how they *wouldn't* expect a negative reaction from customers when you tell them "Now you'll have to visit two different sites, with different queues, different passwords, etc." It was taking something simple and making it a much bigger pain in the ass, for no apparent reason.
I agree with whoever said it when it was first announced: It seems like they just didn't think it through. IIRC, there was even a quote by Netflix's president when they asked him about needing to manage separate queues, and he was like, "Oooh, right. Good point. I'll have to get back to you on that one."
My guess is that they were so wrapped up in large-scale business strategies, wanting to separate out DVD and streaming for accounting, legal, and/or marketing reasons, and somehow no one stopped to ask, "What will this mean, on a practical level, for our customers?"
Not exactly confidence-inspiring.
This past episode of Saturday Night Live had a REALLY FUNNY sketch skewering Netflix and how fast they seem to be changing course and announcing new plans. It was unfortunately cut for time and didn't air, but is available on NBC's website:
http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/netflix-apology/1359563
It was the first thing I thought of when I read the Netflix email this morning. Very funny, apt and appropriate. Almost makes me respect SNL as being on the cutting edge again.
-"Those who fought today will die tommorow."-
Dumpster: the new service for cleaning up after a mess like Qwikster.
They should stop removing content from their streaming index. If they have to stop streaming something because a license expires, their index should change the "Play" button to "Can't Play Right Now", and pushing or hovering over the button should pop up a window saying who owns the content, how the license changed, and HOW TO CONTACT THE CONTENT OWNER to request Netflix licensing.
Right now, as far as the customers are concerned, Netflix is the one hitting them over the head with the 2x4, and Netflix needs to make it clear to the customers that they're holding the stick, but the content owners are pulling the strings.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.