Never mind about that Qwikster thing →
Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix:
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.
This is probably for the best, at least for now. Netflix can remain the place I go to watch movies (or to save recent movies I intend to watch when they come out on DVD) regardless of their available formats or outlets. Plus, Qwikster was a terrible name.
This isn’t the first time Netflix has backtracked on a significant change before it went into effect, but I think it’s the biggest.1
My best guess for the reason: the theoretical streaming-only “Netflix” service was going to lose far too many customers.
I’m sure Netflix will go streaming-only someday, and it’s good that its leadership is trying to get a head start on such a big transition. There are many advantages to ditching legacy technology a bit early. But this was simply far too early to attempt this move.
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Another big announced-and-later-withdrawn change was when they tried to get rid of profiles and subqueues in 2008. ↩︎