We caught wind this morning of some new social features on the Netflix website. Members can now navigate to a “Community” section, which replaces an older “Friends” page.

According to the Netflix Community Blog, the company unveiled the new community section on July 30th and has been tweaking it significantly over the last couple of weeks. There are a number of community features so far:

1. Latest reviews stream that continually loads movie reviews in real time as people post them to Netflix
2. “Members’ Top 10 Lists” widget that displays user-generated movie lists based on what Netflix thinks you will like
3. “Unique in…” area that shows the movies that are uniquely popular in your hometown
4. Selection of strangers on Netflix who share your interests or are most “similar to you”
5. List of your friends’ recent activities with Netflix (what movies they have requested, whether they have been returned, etc.)
6. “Friends’ Quiz” that generates simple questions to test you about your Netflix friends’ movie-renting behavior
7. Friends’ Love/Hated area that shows the movies your friends loved or hated (pretty self-explanatory)

If you are a Netflix user, check out these new features and let us know what you think in the comments. The Netflix developers are also open to feedback, so head over to their blog as well to give them your two cents.

In light of our recent coverage of social networking platforms, Netflix appears to be implementing features that support the notion of niche social networking.

These developments also put Netflix in more direct competition with companies like Flixster that provide social networks for movie fans.

Thanks for the tip Joel Simkhai.