How Social Media Saved Netflix

name.nospam@nospam.example.com (Admin) — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 18:00:00 -1100

Recently, I got to see the power of Social Media at work when Netflix attempted to drastically alter their service.

On June 19, 2008 Netflix posted a message on their blog announcing the removal of individual user queues. One of the differentiating features of Netflix has always been the ability to have separate queues within a single account. Now, they were threating to remove this feature in order to reduce development costs. Thousands of people using secondary queues would have all their ratings erased. Netflix was going to erase the very thing that made their service so valuabe in the first place, a complex recommendation algorithm.

In my own experience, Netflix has done everything it can to make enhance my user experience as much as possible. When they started their Watch-It-Now service, they immediately gave me free hours each months. A few weeks later, they upgraded me to unlimited watching. A lesser company would have insisted on charging for this feature, but Netflix gave it up for free. It is for reasons such as these that this decision was all the more confusing.

So, how did the Netflix community react? They went nuts. Within hours, hundred of negative comments were flooding the Netflix blog. You could actually feel the disappointment in each post. I watched as the comment count grew, knowing with each increment someone at Netflix was sweating more and more. It was only a matter of time before they came to their senses.

And they did. On June 30, a mere 11 days following the original post, they posted a message saying profiles would stay.

I have never so closely seen an example of a big corporation actually LISTENING to the public, and taking their advice. It seems that for the first time in history, we have created an effictive mechanism for the users of a product or service to communicate directly with the people who own it. It appears that in this case, Netflix has adhered to the basic rule of business: Keep your customers happy.

TJ O'Connor

How Social Media Saved Netflix