Ever since Netflix announced that they would be dividing up their DVD rental and online streaming services,folks have been in quite an uproar. With massive amounts of people canceling their subscription and their stock prices taking a huge hit in the bargain,the company has gone into emergency placating mode.
Issuing e-mail apologies to their remaining customers,Netflix has now announced that their DVD division will be separate on the internet as well,by creating a new site called "Qwikster". When that change over will officially begin is still unknown yet people are far from pleased at this new development:
Granted,the new name is so goofy that even a character from a kid's show would be truly embarrassed to have to answer to it and the pricing is going to remain the same,yet this doesn't bother me as much as it does others out there. Sorry,guys and gals,but this isn't as big of a deal as you're making this out to be.
Every company pulls this off once in a while;switching up their tried and true product in order to make it fresh and new,not to mention the major media blitz that such moves tend to generate. They don't always last and sometimes the cost of lost business appears to not have been worth it.
However,most companies are smart enough to figure that out eventually and get back to bringing you what you truly want. In some ways,Netflix is offering both New Coke and Classic Coke at the same time:
Of course,some folks are simply going to continue to see this as an abomination not to be tolerated,like Zuma or Crystal Pepsi. While I wasn't a fan of either one,their existence wasn't as earth shattering to the social order as many claimed it to be(although they were pretty bad):
More than likely,this whole Netflix deal will turn out to be another case of "the more things change,the more they stay the same." Chances are that they won't even keep the name Qwikster(due to it already being the Twitter handle for a stoner)and while that official apology was at best a meek attempt to calm their troubled waters,Netflix is not totally out of the game. Think about it this way,at least they're giving us a good laugh at their expense:
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