» How hard will moving forward be? During yesterday’s earning report, Netflix’s CEO, Reed Hastings explained off his company’s tough year like this: “We made a couple of big mistakes this year. It’s up to us to own up to those mistakes and to move forward.” But will owning up to those mistakes be enough to stop the bleeding amongst investors? A 75 percent drop in three months — when your stock is worth more than $300 — is just insane. It dropped 36 percent today alone. If you think Netflix is going to bounce back, though, now’s the time to buy their stock.
» Oh, and it gets worse: The once-high-flying company now has 99 problems, and a shrinking stock price is one — one that dipped 26 percent in after-hours trading today. The company — which recently raised the cost of its legacy DVD plan, tried to split off DVDs into a separate site and then backed off after everyone hated it — also informed investors today that it would have a couple of unprofitable quarters as it expanded into the UK and Ireland. ”We expect the costs of our entry into the UK and Ireland will push us to be unprofitable on a global basis; that is, domestic profits will not be large enough to both cover international investments and pay for global G&A and technology and development,” the company said. CEO Reed Hastings blamed the drop in subscribers on the price increase.
Give consumers what they want, your stock price rises. How crazy is that, Netflix? Too bad you had to piss them off in the first place.
It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs. This means no change: one website, one account, one password… in other words, no Qwikster.Reed Hastings • In a very short post on the Netflix blog about the about-face his company did regarding Qwikster. He added: “While the July price change was necessary, we are now done with price changes.” That’s all you needed to say.
Not so fas … er … Qwikster. Netflix just ditched its idiotic plan to split up its two halves into two literal companies. Good for them. It was a stupid move. “We underestimated the appeal of the single web site and a single service,” noted Netflix spokesman Steve Swasey. “We greatly underestimated it.” Guess some stoner suddenly has a useless Twitter account. EDIT: It should be noted that Hastings declined an interview request for Brian Stelter’s article.
Netflix/Qwikster update: Without revealing anything, Netflix’s list of top-rented movies is really freaking depressing for you movie connoisseurs. The number one movie in particular. BTW, if you want a good laugh at the expense of the quickly changing company, you can’t do wrong with this cut-for-time SNL sketch, which falls apart in the last minute but is otherwise solid.
Considering the news of late, this e-mail I got tonight is utterly hilarious. It reeks of — oh, what’s the word? — desperation. It’s a smartly-timed e-mail, though, and based on Twitter, one numerous people are getting this evening. Think it’ll work out for them? And did anyone else get this e-mail? (For those wondering: I once subscribed but no longer do; I don’t have to, because I live vicariously through my girlfriend’s queue. She’s a heavy user and goes through about a dozen DVDs a month, on top of streaming.) — Ernie @ SFB
Yahoo wants to buy Hulu now too. They’re going on an “I...
I’m moving back to New York in a few days. Unlike past...
OMG. I got so...
In this week’s Newsweek, a little...
Tumblr this morning. [h/t anne]
#@#$%!.tumblr.com
Here’s a hidden feature that shipped in...
On the @Qwikster beat: The stoner that is the Twitter user @Qwikster — suddenly famous due to a somewhat-rash decision made by Netflix — now has his own parody account, @Qwikster2, which drew three other parody accounts. @Qwikster doesn’t approve. Tumblr user Qwikster has yet to make their opinion known.
(Source: qwikster.com)
@Qwikster wakes up from slumber: Hey Tumblr, wanna buy it? We could use it to tell people how awesome we are. In other news, some joker registered this.
Funny take on Netflix/Qwikster from the folks over at The Oatmeal!
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 (via • follow)
Copyright 2009-2013 Ernie Smith • Ask us stuff! • E-mail us • Follow us on Twitter • Follow us on Facebook
