Comments on: Netflix "Qwikster" has a Twitter problem. A thuggish, weed-loving, Twitter problem.

By: kP

kP — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 19:10:00 +0000

I am replying to my own post: My suspicion is half right: The reason for the split could be so that the Streaming business can be sold off:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/netflix-split-to-set-up-amazon-streaming-merger/58743

By: zakkforchilli

zakkforchilli — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 05:52:00 +0000

It’s illegal to “sell your Twitter handle.” According to their Terms and Conditions.

Hopefully this little terd gets a payday before they throw down the BAN HAMMER and allow Netflix to get it without a fuss.

IDK how specific he has to be to get the Ban hammer for this one though.
Arrington brought this up on TC but didn’t go to much detail.

By: flarktobble

flarktobble — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 17:14:00 +0000

YMMV of course, but I’ve had good luck with Hulu. There are a lot of things to like about Amazon’s streaming, but the catalog was very limited the last time I was looking.

By: flarktobble

flarktobble — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 16:57:00 +0000

Oops, my bad. Didn’t read that far in; got past the opening paragraphs of the email and glazed over the “ratings and reviews won’t show up in the other service” bit. At least the shoe leather makes a nice addition to lunch.

By: thekinginyellow

thekinginyellow — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 16:34:00 +0000

the front page is no longer a glowing vagine…and @qwikster finally updated his thread. it’s amazing to see things evolve before my very eyes! btw, who the hell is in the netflix art department that decided to release that first splash page design? incredible.

By: Brainspore

Brainspore — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 16:24:00 +0000

I kind of figured a big price hike was going to come sooner or later the day I signed up for Netflix. Any way you slice it, ten bucks a month for unlimited streaming and a few DVDs a month was a fantastic value compared to cable and they’d have been fools not to try to squeeze a few more bucks out of us once we were hooked. What I didn’t expect was a bunch of new inconveniences to come along with the price hike. If they keep jerking us around like this it’s only a matter of time before there’s a mass migration to Hulu.

Put another way: I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. I just didn’t expect it to hit me in the balls.

By: billbarnett1661

billbarnett1661 — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 14:52:00 +0000

The power is within each of us… cancel your subscription.

Still the funniest quote….”Breaking News: phone companies are separating the talking and listening services they offer. Now, you’ll have one phone for talking and another for listening. This will make it simpler for users and allow the company to focus better on improving the two separate services. (They consulted with the New Coke developers to make these changes more appealing to the public.)”

By: brainflakes

brainflakes — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 14:49:00 +0000

Maybe they’re planning the old “new coke” trick of ruining their service then bringing it back and becoming even more popular?

By: Lobster

Lobster — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 14:03:00 +0000

I loved that e-mail. “Dear Netflix User, we understand that you’re furious with us, but you need to look at it from our point of view; we really want more money. Also I’m going to miss the Netflix name too, see? I’m one of you!”

By: Brian Cain

Brian Cain — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 13:50:00 +0000

How long until we see Netflix getting into the broadband providing business?

By: toyg

toyg — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 13:22:00 +0000

If true, I’d like to hire the “social media genius” who came up with the strategy, just so that I can then fire him.

By: goldenmansacks

goldenmansacks — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 13:16:00 +0000

3 words: star trek voyager. No starz contract is making the criterion collection look mighty tempting

By: bwcbwc

bwcbwc — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 09:33:00 +0000

Make money from selling the handle…lose money to Sesame Street for unauthorized use of its characters.

By: Daneel

Daneel — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 08:58:00 +0000

We also do cut-glass sherry decanters complete with six glasses on a silver-plated tray that your butler can serve you drinks on, all for £4.95. People say, “How can you sell this for such a low price?”, I say, “because it’s total crap” – Gerald Ratner

By: hadlockk

hadlockk — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 07:48:00 +0000

As it turns out, your actual URL isn’t terribly important if you already have an installed customer base and google points your customers in your direction without hassle. Have you seen John Carmack’s twitter handle? @ID_AA_Carmack? The people who actually care can figure this out easily enough; brand loyalty at this level is something a first year marketing major might fret about.

By: Guest

Guest — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 07:35:00 +0000

By: Ted Brennan

Ted Brennan — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 07:16:00 +0000

“I am so sorry that we raised our prices and lost Starz as a content provider. To make it up to all our customers we are now going to bill them twice a month and make them keep track of multiple websites. ” -REED HASTINGS.

The price increase was poorly executed but not really unexpected. But frankly I don’t care about Netflix business model and how they want to implement it. Netflix needs to relearn that it is about the customer experience.

Reed Hastings has had his run, Netflix should hire @Qwikster !

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 07:10:00 +0000

The post on the Netflix blog is over 22K comments now. I haven’t seen one that isn’t scathing. Or hilarious.

By: 5-Track

5-Track — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 06:39:00 +0000

Anyone else think Netflix has been planning this “coup” for about 6 months, and prepping a stoogely twitter page was part of that plan?

By: scifijazznik

scifijazznik — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 03:07:00 +0000

If you ever find yourself in L.A., I’ll buy a bottle of wine to replace what you lost via projectile nasal expulsion. We can get hammered listening to Fragile by Yes and bitch about televisions not being square anymore.

By: bklynchris

bklynchris — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 00:40:00 +0000

Thank you BB, for letting me know what that email said that I got in a way that didn’t make me stop reading after 2 and a half sentences. When I knew it wasn’t saying I could have DVD’s for the same price as I was paying for streaming I stopped reading.

By: bklynchris

bklynchris — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 00:36:00 +0000

I think it is very important to know (I have a lot in common with Elmo) this “*” made me blow wine out my nose. Cause that is funny on so so many levels. One being me thinking, “Hey, I bet that wouldn’t be too bad to listen to, I want that collection” the other-”seriously? this dude has a Supertramp live bootleg LP collection!”. Only to follow it with the disclaimer foot note!

Man, I’m still crying.

By: EH

EH — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 23:49:00 +0000

greencine.com is still up and running.

By: blueelm

blueelm — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 23:45:00 +0000

I hate seeing a good concept run into the ground by poor executive decisions. They don’t have enough of their more odd films on streaming. If I wanted access to boring movies I’d just get cable. I suppose if they go under I can go back to buying dvds of films that look interesting and then selling them off if they disappoint me.

By: Warren_Terra

Warren_Terra — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 23:38:00 +0000

So, to sum up: at 3AM a poorly-written email was sent out announcing a major change in our service provider’s entire structure, in a way that is very confusing and causes people to become concerned that the service will now become much harder to use. And the monumental fnckups didn’t check whether the twitter handle for their new name was available, and they didn’t squat the URLs for the half-dozen most likely misspellings of their easily misspelled name (and, no , quickster.com isn’t them either). Honestly, it’s like the CEO was drunk when he announced this.

By: Their feldspars

Their feldspars — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 23:34:00 +0000

Great idea, Reed, choosing a name that can be spelled 27 different ways. Also, why does the new “Quick” name refer to the mode that’s slower–snail mail delivery? Seems intentionally bad to me. Was the name “Leprosy” already taken?

By: EH

EH — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 23:32:00 +0000

nobody has pointed out how shockingly similar this name is to “Quixstar”

I’ve seen it a few times. Nobody seems to care.

By: t3kna2007

t3kna2007 — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 23:31:00 +0000

> i actually walked into a blockbuster, shelled out $1.07
> for four episodes and will give them my receipt which
> has a free rental on it for the remaining episodes
> this afternoon.

Lucky you to still have a Blockbuster. Ours are all closed now, as I discovered when I went to rent season 4 of The Wire after basically inhaling the first three seasons over the course of a couple weeks, well and truly hooked. Standing in front of the locked door, looking at the bare interior, I suddenly understood why, the last time I’d been in the store, the staff were all running around packing things up like they were preparing to depart a listing Titanic.

Exactly as Antinous mentioned, bandwidth limits make Netflix streaming a non-starter for me.

By: BenMS

BenMS — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 23:13:00 +0000

This guy has had that twitter handle for at least five months now. The failure lies with Netflix not doing their homework with a cursory google/social media search.

By: veggiespam

veggiespam — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 23:10:00 +0000

I’m switch to DVD-only at the end of the month and would have occasionally enabled Streaming when I would be stranded with a lot of spare time. After the split, my queue and my ratings will not exist on both sites, so there is no more lock-in with Netflix and Quickstar [sic]. With no lock-in, I’m free to use another streaming service as it will be the same amount work figure out what movies I’d want to see. So, can anyone tell me how good is Hulu or Amazon?