Netflix is finally listening, but who the hell was saying this? →
I received a wonderful bit of news in my inbox this morning from Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings:
I messed up. I owe everyone an explanation.
It is clear from the feedback over the past two months that many members felt we lacked respect and humility in the way we announced the separation of DVD and streaming, and the price changes. That was certainly not our intent, and I offer my sincere apology. I’ll try to explain how this happened.
For the past five years, my greatest fear at Netflix has been that we wouldn’t make the leap from success in DVDs to success in streaming. Most companies that are great at something – like AOL dialup or Borders bookstores – do not become great at new things people want (streaming for us) because they are afraid to hurt their initial business.
That seems like a legitimate fear, amirite? I get this. There is a real need to make sure these two divisions of the company are making money. Why else would you provide a good or service?
So we 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. It’s hard for me to write this after over 10 years of mailing DVDs with pride, but we think it is necessary and best: In a few weeks, we will rename our DVD by mail service to “Qwikster”.
And (allegedly, in my mind) promptly sell that shit off as soon as possible. WTF??!! First world problems, man, they be tuff.
• • • MS • • •