I’m a big fan of Netflix. I love the concept of this company for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is its position as the anti-christ to cable companies currently monopolizing our connectivity to all things entertaining.
If it’s not obvious at this point, I’ll just go ahead and say that I feel cable is annoying. My internet connection is slow, there’s nothing good on TV and I’d rather use the check I write to them every month to give myself a million tiny paper cuts.
And then along comes Netflix with their dazzling red envelopes. You open the mailbox and there it is, winking at you. A Christmas present to delight and amaze on an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday evening. And the streaming. Oh the humanity! You mean I can watch whatever I want, right damn now? Words cannot describe my zeal, my giddy, kid-in-a-candy-store-ness. And then to top it off, CEO, Reed Hastings, goes and buys original content – like HBO on crack. And again I find myself amazed and delighted on a whole other level. It’s unstoppable. It’s earth shattering.
But wait. Is that irony I hear knocking? Can we talk about a company that lives and dies through the most fucktastic website ever devised? Is anyone behind the wheel of this thing? Does anyone at Netflix visit their own website? Can I get an amen?
You know, if you’re going to suggest a movie to me, base your hypothesis on data more empirical than the random and coincidental relationship my movie watching habits have to Joe Blow in Miskooga, Kentucky. Let me lay it out for you: just because we both conceded to watch Eat, Pray, Love at the behest of our respective significant others, doesn’t mean we’re two peas in a pod when it comes to documentaries about bass fishing. I don’t give a crap about bass fishing.
And what about my basic humans rights? Like the right to sort my queue by genre or view my upcoming selections by cover art instead of title.
Oh, and what happened to the friends thing? Who decided to eviscerate that site’s only good feature? Are they afraid of being like Facebook? Facebook is worth $50 billion. Be like Facebook. It’s a good thing.
I’m begging you, Netflix, hire a programmer. Hire a hundred. Lock them in a room with hot dogs, beer and porn. Do not let them come out until they’ve built an Amazon-style digital brain that can come up with something better than “We suggest Bend It Like Beckham because you liked Arthroscopic Colon Surgery And You“.
There. I said it. Feel free to disagree in the comments.
-KJ
Personally I think Netflix is awesome I have been a member since 1999 and it has come a long way and now I can just get almost everything on streaming feature. But every so often they don’t have what I want but that happens and then there is always Amazon movies rental program and they have quite a god amount also I go over there anytime they don’t have something {netflix}.
Well said. I’m not giving up Netflix anytime soon either. But the fact is, the bar has been raised and our red-enveloped friends need to step up their game before they are royally trounced by the likes of Comcast, HBO and Time Warner who, I must assume, are all busy throwing darts a picture of Reed Hastings as we speak.
I think I more or less agree with this mini-rant, but I will point out that Netflix has done one better than locking programmers in a room. I give you The Netflix Prize (http://www.netflixprize.com/), which kicked over a million bucks out the door in award money to improve their suggestion algorithms. Some friends and I considered giving it a crack in graduate school, but decided there would be much bigger fish in the sea and indeed we were right: AT&T Labs gave a handful of employees a bunch of free time and access to their arsenal and that team took home the bacon.
To your point, however, it is a distinct rarity that I watch any titles suggested for me by the site (though I did happen across the absolute gem “Mary and Max” in this way – you must add this to The Queue immediately). Regardless, I’ll give you my Netflix when you take it out of my cold, dead hands.