The Social

The people have spoken: Netflix will not be eliminating user profiles, the account feature that lets you split movie rentals among separate queues for a household. The company had announced the removal of profiles earlier this month, much to user dismay.

"As someone who enjoys helping his 4-year-old daughter manage her one-DVD-at-a-time, G-rated sub-account, I identified with these thoughtful pleas to maintain Profiles," a Netflix product manager identified only as "Todd" wrote on the company's blog. "Because of an ongoing desire to make our website easier to use, we believed taking a feature away that is only used by a very small minority would help us improve the site for everyone. Listening to our members, we realized that users of this feature often describe it as an essential part of their Netflix experience."

When Netflix opted to eliminate profiles, the company said that the feature was only used by a small sliver of its member base. It was a vocal sliver, however, and a thread on customer service forum Get Satisfaction revealed a host of angry users, ranging from families who wanted to keep parental controls on separate queues for their children to spouses who didn't want to bicker over disparate film tastes.

With members threatening cancellation or--shudder!--a switch to troubled rival Blockbuster, it clearly wasn't a great move on Netflix's part. Response to it had been overwhelmingly negative, and the company clearly got clued in.

For the past two years, my roommate and I have split a Netflix user account, mostly so that I don't have to deal with his trashy action-movie picks mucking up my queue of navel-gazing Wes Anderson knockoffs, and so that we can ensure a clean split in our four-at-a-time subscription. He'd totally hog it otherwise.

But starting on September 1, we're going to have to suck it up. The rental-by-mail service announced on its blog on Thursday that it would be doing away with separate user profiles on the same account.

The reason, the post explained, is that it's a little-used feature that some people found complicated: only a percent of Netflix members use it. "We will do our best to find better ways for families to share accounts than the existing profiles feature," it read, "and will continue to invest in improving the Web site experience in many different ways."

So maybe a new kind of split-household account is on the way, but for now, my roommate and I are going to have to either share a password (which could raise security concerns for some people) or pay for two separate accounts (which will cost more for both of us). Customized recommendations will be directed to both of us rather than our individual accounts, which means--eek!--that I'm going to see Meet the Spartans recommended to me instead of Flight of the Conchords.

Lousy move, Netflix.

A thread on feedback forum Get Satisfaction revealed that other people aren't too happy either. Some raised concerns that they could no longer operate separate queues with parental controls for their children, and others expressed plights similar to mine--they share accounts with roommates or housemates who have vastly different cinematic tastes.

"Way to go, Netflix, I'll just be canceling the service at this point," one user wrote. "I specifically upgraded to the four-at-a-time service to split out the queues for my wife and myself. I'm not going to pay for another separate account."

And if you've been using separate Netflix profiles as a way to cloak your porn habit (or chick-flick habit) from your spouse, get ready. You'll have some explaining to do come September.