Friday, November 11, 2011

Netflix expands tablets usage, pays no attention to PR

You don't need me to tell you this, do you? After this year of crazy announcements and unrelenting emails from Netflix's CEO? After the removal of all "friends" features, making "member reviews" anonymous (and thus, worthless), hiking rates 2x in >1 year?

Of course you don't need me to tell you this. You've seen it for yourself. And, if you dropped your dvd service and kept streaming like I did, you know that you can't look up an actor's available CV. Yes, the system only shows the movies that you can watch instantly. Who would wanna know that other stuff, right?

So yes, Netflix continues to pay no attention to their customers or basic principles of PR. It's just a little funnier this time out.

This week, Netflix expanded its tablet compatibility to include Kindle Fire (as of today 11/11/11) and Barnes & Noble's NOOK (announced four days ago). There's nothing technically bad about this news. Sure, it will help increase internet traffic, raising bandwidth throttling and pricing issues again, but I won't argue that now. Maybe I'm bitter that I had to install the Netflix app 3 times before it would stream anything.

What's wrong is how they the company released Monday's news.


Look at that image above again and laugh with me, please. In the headline of the article, it's announced that "Netfix" was available on the NOOK. How the hell do you screw up your own company's name in a news announcement? It's part of the title, it's in the url, and it's clear as day! And it sounds like a business founded by Ewan MacGregor's character in Trainspotting; "choose Netfix," right?

The fact that this is a major, big-boy company with paid staff and everything is what makes this so surprising. The sheer snark-factor of it all was enough to make me put out this post. My vacation, however, is still on-going, and I don't have an update on that yet.