I logged into my Netflix account for the first time in a while last night. (Kelly and I have been on a steady diet of West Wing - so not a lot of queue management going on.)
2 things caught my eye as I browsed through some of the latest interface changes:
- My Mom and Dad have both "This is Spinal Tap" and "The Big Lebowski" teed up in their queue. I could not be prouder to be the son of Tommy and Lisa Boggs.
- The new "Friends" features:
The beauty of the Netflix "Friends Community" is that it actually generates real conversations with my "friends". For instance, DJ rated "Schindler's List" 4 stars and I told him he was an idiot. (I'm only 72% like DJ.)
To me, this is the true measuring stick of any product/service, really. Do people talk about it with their friends? Do you tell your wife about it when you get home? Do people take photos of the company mascot on their family vacation? Do people blog about it when their wives are dying to watch the next episode of "The West Wing"?
2 things caught my eye as I browsed through some of the latest interface changes:
- My Mom and Dad have both "This is Spinal Tap" and "The Big Lebowski" teed up in their queue. I could not be prouder to be the son of Tommy and Lisa Boggs.
- The new "Friends" features:
- The "Notebook" feature aggregates all of the note/review exchanges with my friends. I'm curious if a "LOTR sux, Star Wars rules!" and "Napolean Dynamite is AWESOME" crowd develops out of Netflix that will mirror the "Hey Bro! We were soooo wasted last night!" and "Oh my Gah! Your (sic) so hot!" crowd of MySpace. I hope not. I think we're safe as long as my 14 year old cousins don't get Netflix accounts.
- "Taste Similarity" compares my "taste" to that of my friends. According to this feature, my tastes are 84% similar to Joe. However, Joe only gave "The Big Lebowski" 4 stars. Clearly, this feature is crap.
- The sliding bar view that displays viewed and queued movies is very Apple-esque. Which is good.
The beauty of the Netflix "Friends Community" is that it actually generates real conversations with my "friends". For instance, DJ rated "Schindler's List" 4 stars and I told him he was an idiot. (I'm only 72% like DJ.)
To me, this is the true measuring stick of any product/service, really. Do people talk about it with their friends? Do you tell your wife about it when you get home? Do people take photos of the company mascot on their family vacation? Do people blog about it when their wives are dying to watch the next episode of "The West Wing"?