I had a lot of confidence in Netflix as recently as 6-8 months ago.... enough to buy a substantial amount of their stock. Obviously that confidence turned out to be expensive to indulge.
It would be different if they were merely catching bad breaks like the loss of the Starz content, but they're actively acting stupid. I didn't know WordPress had a 5000-comment default limit until the Netflix corporate blog overflowed with angry messages from customers after they destroyed the Web front end for their instant-watch service a couple of months ago. The movie browser page still hasn't been fixed, and is still completely unusable, but it looks like they have learned how to disable commenting on most of their subsequent blog posts.
And now, the Quixtar/Quickster/Quickstar/Qwikstar/Quicster/Qwickster/... business, and the... interesting way it was announced by Hastings. Not much can be said about this move that hasn't already been said. About all I can suggest, as both a customer and a stockholder, is that a certified laboratory be engaged to check the Los Gatos municipal water system for heavy-metal content.
All snark aside, it's going to take a smart, agile, innovative, and above all, customer-focused company to deal with the Comcasts and the AT&Ts and the Starz and other middlemen who stand between Netflix and a sustainable business model. Unfortunately the events of the past few months are telegraphing precisely the opposite signals. What in the world is going on over there? Either the world's first corporate suicide plan is in progress, or a brilliant and utterly obscure rope-a-dope strategy is being executed. Either way, the MBA program case studies are going to be really interesting when Netflix finally pulls off whatever they're trying to accomplish.
It would be different if they were merely catching bad breaks like the loss of the Starz content, but they're actively acting stupid. I didn't know WordPress had a 5000-comment default limit until the Netflix corporate blog overflowed with angry messages from customers after they destroyed the Web front end for their instant-watch service a couple of months ago. The movie browser page still hasn't been fixed, and is still completely unusable, but it looks like they have learned how to disable commenting on most of their subsequent blog posts.
And now, the Quixtar/Quickster/Quickstar/Qwikstar/Quicster/Qwickster/... business, and the... interesting way it was announced by Hastings. Not much can be said about this move that hasn't already been said. About all I can suggest, as both a customer and a stockholder, is that a certified laboratory be engaged to check the Los Gatos municipal water system for heavy-metal content.
All snark aside, it's going to take a smart, agile, innovative, and above all, customer-focused company to deal with the Comcasts and the AT&Ts and the Starz and other middlemen who stand between Netflix and a sustainable business model. Unfortunately the events of the past few months are telegraphing precisely the opposite signals. What in the world is going on over there? Either the world's first corporate suicide plan is in progress, or a brilliant and utterly obscure rope-a-dope strategy is being executed. Either way, the MBA program case studies are going to be really interesting when Netflix finally pulls off whatever they're trying to accomplish.