We’re All Birthers On This Bus

When Joe met Orly…. I smell wedding bells.

Or at least the stink of a tequila-filled one-night stand in the Holiday Inn…

I speak English.

TJ/ Oh. My. God. Is anyone following the Twitter Qwikster account Netflix thing? So funny. This Qwikster person, I think he might be one of my brothers.

@JNOV: Check out – our BarrackObama Twitter account as 50,000+ followers.

He.

Hehehehe.

Hohohohohoho.

Might be time to start give Barrack some interesting things to say now that he has a real audience. (It’s twice Santorum’s follower group.)

@FlyingChainSaw: Do it! This Elmo dude stumbled into something hilarious. This morning, I got this:

Dear JNOV,

I messed up. I owe you an explanation.

It is clear from the feedback over the past two months that many members felt we lacked respect and humility in the way we announced the separation of DVD and streaming and the price changes. That was certainly not our intent, and I offer my sincere apology. Let me explain what we are doing.

For the past five years, my greatest fear at Netflix has been that we wouldn’t make the leap from success in DVDs to success in streaming. Most companies that are great at something – like AOL dialup or Borders bookstores – do not become great at new things people want (streaming for us). So we moved quickly into streaming, but I should have personally given you a full explanation of why we are splitting the services and thereby increasing prices. It wouldn’t have changed the price increase, but it would have been the right thing to do.

So here is what we are doing and why.

Many members love our DVD service, as I do, because nearly every movie ever made is published on DVD. DVD is a great option for those who want the huge and comprehensive selection of movies.

I also love our streaming service because it is integrated into my TV, and I can watch anytime I want. The benefits of our streaming service are really quite different from the benefits of DVD by mail. We need to focus on rapid improvement as streaming technology and the market evolves, without maintaining compatibility with our DVD by mail service.

So we realized that streaming and DVD by mail are really becoming two different businesses, with very different cost structures, that need to be marketed differently, and we need to let each grow and operate independently.

It’s hard to write this after over 10 years of mailing DVDs with pride, but we think it is necessary: In a few weeks, we will rename our DVD by mail service to “Qwikster”. We chose the name Qwikster because it refers to quick delivery. We will keep the name “Netflix” for streaming.

Qwikster will be the same website and DVD service that everyone is used to. It is just a new name, and DVD members will go to qwikster.com to access their DVD queues and choose movies. One improvement we will make at launch is to add a video games upgrade option, similar to our upgrade option for Blu-ray, for those who want to rent Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360 games. Members have been asking for video games for many years, but now that DVD by mail has its own team, we are finally getting it done. Other improvements will follow. A negative of the renaming and separation is that the Qwikster.com and Netflix.com websites will not be integrated.

There are no pricing changes (we’re done with that!). If you subscribe to both services you will have two entries on your credit card statement, one for Qwikster and one for Netflix. The total will be the same as your current charges. We will let you know in a few weeks when the Qwikster.com website is up and ready.

For me the Netflix red envelope has always been a source of joy. The new envelope is still that lovely red, but now it will have a Qwikster logo. I know that logo will grow on me over time, but still, it is hard. I imagine it will be similar for many of you.

I want to acknowledge and thank you for sticking with us, and to apologize again to those members, both current and former, who felt we treated them thoughtlessly.

Both the Qwikster and Netflix teams will work hard to regain your trust. We know it will not be overnight. Actions speak louder than words. But words help people to understand actions.

Respectfully yours,

-Reed Hastings, Co-Founder and CEO, Netflix

p.s. I have a slightly longer explanation along with a video posted on our blog, where you can also post comments.

and I was like, meh.

Then I read this:

Brooke Hammerling, the founder of the technology public relations firm Brew Media Relations, said the separation announcement felt as if it had been hastily pulled together. On Monday afternoon, Netflix did not yet have an official Web site for Qwikster, just a holding page that promised it was “launching soon.” Social networking users noticed that the owner of the name Qwikster on Twitter was not a DVD distributor but a man with an Elmo profile picture whose page was filled with foul language and drug use references.

and immediately did a Twitter search on Qwikster. I think Barrack should reach out to Qwikster to discuss jobs such as.

@JNOV:

I messed up. I jacked your subscription price 60 percent, and didn’t tell you a sweet enough lie to make you overlook it.

I owe my stockholders an explanation. So I’m going to further confuse our customers, split DVD and streaming into separate companies, and hope they don’t notice that True Blood is only available by mail.

As is Deep Space Nine. And the NextGen movies. Because when we say we have all of Star Trek via streaming, we mean only the Star Trek we think anybody gives a shit about.

Seriously. Try Enterprise! It’s got the Quantum Leap dude!

Respectfully yours,

-Reed Hastings, Co-Founder and CEO, Netflix

p.s. Don’t hate me. Because I don’t hate you. I just don’t care about you.

It’s a demented brand dilution strategy at best and will just send everyone to teach themselves how to use torrents. Their investors are going to hose the executive suite and find an adult to run that shithouse. It was already overpriced by half. I looked at it once and was shocked how expensive it was for crap you could pull off of torrents in a few keystrokes.

@FlyingChainSaw: AHEM!

How about you use Netflix and I just send you the money right out of my pocket. That way you are protected from prosecution and the transfer of monies will be a lot less complicated.

@FlyingChainSaw: BarrackObama should follow @stinque. Or would that be too telling?

@Tommmcatt Be Fat, And That Be That: No worries. It’s not like Walt has anything worth stealing.

@Tommmcatt Be Fat, And That Be That: Disney didn’t make Banacek!

@nojo: I dunno. If we get like a million followers and the Secret Service gets pissed off when Barrack admits he saw a shitfaced Boehner stuff a woodchuck in his ass in the Senate steam room while say the Rosary or something, it wouldn’t be fun to be the domain registrant of record.

@FlyingChainSaw: I dunno. I think Barrack might like to retweet some stinque.

@Tommmcatt Be Fat, And That Be That: Right.

@nojo: Basically. Once Starz goes, I’m back to streaming from Red China.

@FlyingChainSaw: The domain registrant of record is The Hon. Teabagger from Utah. But I’m quite sure his doppelganger would love the publicity resulting from a Secret Service visit.

Orly is Jewish? Oy. Must be fetal Manichevitz syndrome.

Well, there you go. Barrack can say he got video from The Hon. Teabagger of Boehner stuffing Punxsutawney Phil and his log cage up his ass.

@nojo: That fucking asshole, he is going down!

@FlyingChainSaw: don’t forget the #tcot please oh please

Does angel breath know that ‘Netflix’ has become a verb? Like ‘Google’?

@JNOV: What’s that? Beverage company?

@FlyingChainSaw: Uh huh. It’s the hashtag for “top conservatives on Twitter.”

@Benedick: Wow. Even I haven’t stooped that low, and I’ll probably cancel my account before I do.

@FlyingChainSaw: You know, this guy.

@mellbell: Great recall!