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[wm_star]

Don't know how many of you might be Netflix people, but in case you haven't heard, they're planning to discontinue their profiles feature as of 1 September.  I'm pretty ticked off about this development.  It means David and I will no longer be able to have separate queues, and all of the movie ratings I've done over the past 3 years, which generate my movie recommendations, will be eliminated then.  I'll have to re-enter all of the movies in my queue into David's queue, which is the main profile, or else we'll just lose the list forever.  And then we'll have to manually manage the single queue together to try and make sure we each get a movie we want to see.  This is a huge step backward from a process that already works fine and is automated.  The reason they claim for eliminating it?  Not enough people use it and some people find it confusing to set up.  WHAT???  So make it simpler or give them a tutorial or call them freakin' morons, but don't take that feature away from the rest of us!  This is a stand-apart feature for Netflix, one that has made many people sign up with them in the first place.  Now I'm really annoyed.

If you care, here is the announcement directly from Netflix: http://blog.netflix.com/

And here is a website attempting to make Netflix take it back, or at least implement a new version of it before the 1 September date.  They have a petition to sign and everything (yes, of course someone has set up one of these already; it is the internet, after all): http://www.savenetflixprofiles.com/

[Tom]

Who's David?

You've quite possible alienated/confused several people.

[wm_star]

Sorry, sorry - I was just ticked off.  Re-reading my post, I don't know why anyone would feel alienated, but I can certainly see how they'd be confused - sorry for not stating it more clearly!

David is my husband.  For us, this is an annoying development because we maintain separate queues through our profiles, and one of those profiles is just going to go away in September.  It happens that my profile is the "extra" one and his is the "main" one, and so all of my movie ratings will just disappear on 1 September, as will my queue - I will have to manually add the movies in my queue to his queue.  Since we're married and have generally similar taste in movies, it won't be so hard for us to manage the queue together, but it will be an annoyance.  For people who are roommates or what have you and share the service, this is going to be a much bigger problem.  Ratings of movies and the recommendations generated by those ratings will be meaningless when there is only one profile shared by two roommates with disparate tastes, and it will be much harder for them to equitably share the account from a single profile.  I'm angry because it seems like a ploy by Netflix to try to make people in that situation pay for two accounts instead of one, and because it just seems dumb to me to take a step backward, service- and innovation-wise.

[Muppet King]

I share an account with six people and have zero problems with having just one profile.  I think you can manage a single account for two people with similar tastes in movies.

[Aminal]

No, I agree, it is totally backwards.  But I can see how people who aren't sharing an account (like my roommate and I) would never use the profiles feature.

[thepugs]

Netflix's recommendations system bases it's suggestions on your ratings, which are profile-wide (not account wide).

Getting rid of profiles like this just smashes everyone together - for example, if I'm not interested at all in watching Little Women, but I'm sharing a profile with somebody who loves the shit out of it...

It's a service people use and enjoy, and I imagine they'll lose customers doing away with it.