Sep
19
Netflix To Split Into Two Companies, Still Doesn’t Understand Their Customers
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Netflix. Stop it.
Just stop.
People woke up this morning to a late night email from Netflix chief executive, Reed Hastings, explaining that they messed up. Which is great, and it's great to hear they recognize that.
But what good does recognizing it do if they don't do anything about it? In fact, they seem to be making it worse:
Under the new plan announced Sunday, the two services will still be split – and the announced price changes will remain. What changes, however, is that the services will become two separate entities with different names and separate lines on customers’ credit card statements. Beginning in a few weeks, there will be Netflix, the video-streaming service; and Qwikster, the DVD-by-mail company.
“[W]e realized that streaming and DVD by mail are becoming two quite different businesses, with very different cost structures, different benefits that need to be marketed differently, and we need to let each grow and operate independently,” Hastings wrote.
Or, you could keep it the same, start adding better titles to streaming, get rid of the waiting periods for title releases (we understand this is partly on the production companies, but how about some negotiation?), and (Read more...)