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19 Sep 2011 17:57

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Biz: Netflix sees shares drop on heels of unpopular Qwikster gamble

  • I have a feeling the apologies are just beginning. They’re catching customers off-guard by making huge changes and not providing a lot of explanation for them. It’s been handled poorly.
  • Mike Gordon, chief executive of the corporate PR firm “Gordon Group” • Issuing his dire analysis of the Netflix/Qwikster fracas, which we spent a bit of time on last night. Basically, the big picture for Netflix of late has not been promising — their price-hikes announced during the summer sparked a non-negligible exodus from their service, with about 1 million of their 25 million U.S. customers said “no thanks.” When the company was then forced to revise their cancellation figures for the worse last week, their share prices tumbled by 25%. Then, already playing pretty fast and loose with the strength of their company, came last night’s unexpected announcement. The result? Another 4% drop in share prices. Whatever your feelings about Netflix’s corporate strategy in a vacuum, it’s clear that with real customers they’ve fouled this up to a striking extent. source

24 Oct 2010 11:30

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Biz: Netflix quickly growing up, away from DVD distribution

  • 31% Netflix’s increase in revenue in the third quarter from a year ago
  • 16.9M the number of subscribers the service has right now
  • 19M+ the estimate of of subscriber growth by the end of the year source
  • » The future for Netflix: The key fact to take from Netflix’s recent subscriber results? That comes from Netflix CEO Reed Hastings: “We are now a streaming company, which also offers DVD-by-mail,” he says. The company recently announced a streaming-only plan, which makes a lot of sense because that’s where much of their growth is.