Profiles going away!?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Donovan on June 18, 2008 at 9:50pm

Add another name to the growing list of disappointed netflix users.

Rather inexcusable to remove features of any product -- that's generally a sign of poor planning or poor management of the product. I'm a Software Engineer/Web Developer as quite a few other dumbfounded folks are -- I don't believe for a second that these multiple profiles cause a slowdown, especially if it's just 1% of the users that use it. The implementation must be all kinds of wonky if that's truly the case -- a feature that's merely a duplicate of the core functionality inherent to said program, used by 1% of the users, should hardly affect preformance at all if properly implemented... I can't fathom a way of implementing a feature like that that would cause such an excuse to be valid. Of course, I can't see the code in front of me, but I can't think of any technical reasons why it should be valid -- that just sounds like poor implementation.

The fact that there is no way to convert the ratings/queue to a new account is doubly ridiculous. Slap. In. The. Face.

Congrats Netflix, you've officially made me question your service. If you're going to do something like this at least do it gracefully (like, you know, not pouring salt in the users wounds?). Truly mind boggling when a company manages to make a decision so poor that you start wondering what kind of monkeys are running it.

I love Netflix and put it right after electricity as far as importance in a household (almost above water!), but this is a terrible decision, by all accounts. Even Netflix employees should be able to see why this is a very poor decision -- at very least the lack of any sort of migration of the customers work was a patently poor decision (any marketing idiot could tell you that if you're going to cut a feature you do it so you make the transition as easy as possible). Rewrite the way it's handled, don't cut features.

Next thing you know they'll be limiting your ratings to 1000 movies, as it takes too much space/resources and most users rate less than that! What a pisser.

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Adrian on June 19, 2008 at 12:16am

The Netflix site was designed without profiles, then features were added continuously for a few years, then profiles were added, but with minimum disruption to existing features, rather than a ground-up redesign, then a few more years of features were added over the top.

Now in some ways its too messy and its slowing down our ability to change and add new features, so a lot of investment is going into cleaning up the code. Part of that cleanup is to simplify and re-implement things so that we can get more interesting and advanced things done more quickly in the future. For this feature that is used by a percent or two of the user base, it will make cleanup a lot faster by removing it.

When profiles were invented, most users were on multiple-disc plans. More recently we have added one-disc plans, and a lot of users are on those plans and can't use profiles, even though they have the same needs.

Adrian from Netflix

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Bryan on June 19, 2008 at 4:08am

So obviously we're going with "our programmers are too incompetent to fix the site without removing major functionality"? Time to get better programmers. Pay them in something other than popcorn this time!

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Pihk on June 19, 2008 at 9:58am

chuckle chuckle

You're a riot!

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by sensei6375 on June 20, 2008 at 8:59pm

and then raise your plan rates to pay for the "better programmers"?

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by misterh1 on June 19, 2008 at 6:14am

Soooooo, Netflix is willing to lose the multi-disc subscribers to make the one-disc subscribers more happy? In the cellular world, we constantly look at ARPU as a factor, that's Average Revenue Per User, and we are always trying to raise that number. You don't cut service to the customer spending more money with you to make your customers spending less happy. More faulty logic from another Netflix person.

Speaking of faulty logic, read today's blog from "Todd" at Netflix. He states that customers found profiles "difficult to understand and cumbersome" - but no one here has stated that. I never found them cumbersome or difficult to understand.

He goes on to say that they will "try to find other ways for families to share accounts". Generally, you would not remove the feature being used until you have a new solution; again, Netflix shows no logical pattern of thought.

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Adrian on June 19, 2008 at 9:38am

The cellular world is a relatively saturated and mature market, and increasing ARPU for a constant sized user base would be a way to increase revenue. However, if you reduce the ARPU and it causes a large increase in the total number of customers then it does make business sense. If you look at the quarterly results from Netflix, you will see that Netflix has been reducing ARPU as the business has grown, and that this has greatly increased the size of the addressable market.

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Fictioneer Zero on June 25, 2008 at 4:20pm

So what you are saying is, you want families who have a multi-disc Netflix membership to drop it and sign up for multiple single disc memberships, at a higher per disc rate.

Thanks. I'm fine with that plan, right up to signing up again.

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by runnr1 on June 20, 2008 at 5:10pm

but no one here has stated that

yes, because people tend to speak up and admit when they don't understand simple instructions. it's not at all embarrassing.

it's apparent to me as i read these posts that all of MENSA has organized to speak out about this.

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Ernie on June 19, 2008 at 7:49am

Fine. So remove profiles, but first give us a way to export or transfer or just preserve our profile info, so that when you then re-implement from the ground up and clean things up we have a way to restore our profile info. Or worst case give a way to transfer a profile into a second account. That does not seem like too much to ask. Don't just rip it out with no alternative but to lose all the ratings and queue and reviews that we've made.

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Dave R on June 20, 2008 at 8:16pm

So, let's assume you're going to piss off about 80,000 subscribers. Let's also assume (conservatively, in my opinion) that about 10% of them are going to downgrade their plan by one disc, either because they won't find it as useful without profiles, or just because they're angry. Right there you're looking at losing 80,000 * %10 * ~$7/month = $56,000/month in lost subscriber fees.

That's just 10% dropping one disc - that doesn't even count those of us who plan to leave, or potential subscribers who we're going to warn off due to being taken for granted, or just more people willing to stand against your decision. Do you really think your new features are going to recoup that subscriber base? Are you saying you can't get people who can fix your profiles code with that kind of money?

I personally don't care what lengths you need to go to to fix the problem without impacting my customer experience. That's your problem for not having implemented profiles more cleanly in the first place. Who's convenience is more important: your developers' or your customers'?

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Dave R on June 20, 2008 at 9:18pm

Correction to my comment above: I realize Netflix' margins are probably slim, so that only a fraction of subscriber fees are 'disposable', but still - are we really so inconsequential?

▶ Reply to This

• 1
• 2
• 3
• ...
• 21
• 22
• 23
• 24
• 25
• 26
• 27
• ...
• 111
• 112
• 113