At a J.P. Morgan conference held in Boston on Wednesday, Netflix CFO David Wells said that the company was looking up and, more importantly, customers who cancelled the service because of the Qwikster rebranding, plan repricing, and subsequent poor PR are now returning.
The company drove users away due to a considerable price hike on its cheapest disk plan – from $9.99 to $15.98 – as well as its ham-handed decision to split the company into a streaming arm – Netflix – and a disk-in-the-mail arm – Qwikster. Wells said:
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Netflix just released their Q1 2012 earnings report [PDF], and managed to beat analyst estimates by reporting losses of $0.08 per share on $870 million in revenue.
In the weeks leading up to the release, analysts projected a net loss of $0.27 per share on $866 million in revenue thanks to the company’s pronounced push for international growth.
That works out to a $5 million net loss for the quarter, though the brass are preparing themselves for better days to come. According to their release, CEO Reed Hastings and CFO David Wells expect to return to global profitability next quarter, and are gearing up for their launch in a still-unknown new European market in Q4. → Read More
Spain is getting its own version of Netflix, thanks to a company called Youzee, which exits its private beta period today. Like Netflix, Youzee offers streaming movies and TV on-demand, but it also features titles for rent, too. The company has agreements with a number of distributors, including BBC, Sony, Disney, Fox International Channels, TVE, Telemundo and more.
To kick off its launch, Youzee is offering new users to try out the service for free. → Read More
Subscription flower delivery Service H.Bloom, which once described itself as the ‘Netflix of Flowers,’ raised a $10 million Series B funding round today. The investment was lead by Shasta Ventures with the participation of a number of existing VC funds and angel investors, including Battery Ventures, Thomas Lehrman of Gerson Lerhman Group, and ShoeDazzle’s Brian Lee. Shasta’s Sean Flynn is also joining the H.Bloom board. In total, including this round, H.Bloom has now raised $18 million. → Read More
Netflix is rolling out a major update to its Xbox 360 application today, which is the biggest update to arrive since the integration of Kinect gestures and voice control back in December of last year. The updated app brings a number of new features and enhancements, but the most notable changes involve the addition of Facebook sharing in select markets and single sign-on support using your Xbox LIVE credentials. Single sign-on means you can now sign using your own Xbox LIVE account in order to watch Netflix movies on consoles other than your own.
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Netflix has been making a few moves to separate its DVD business more from its streaming operation, and today brings news of the latest move in that direction: the company has bought the domain name DVD.com, the company has confirmed to us.
The news raises questions of Netflix possibly getting ready to pull a Qwikster on us after all and separate its streaming and DVD businesses — something others have suggested it might do — but TechCrunch understands that there are no plans to spin off its DVD business into a separate company, à la the Qwikster strategy of last year that so qwikly spiraled into a PR disaster for the company, and was then abandoned. → Read More
Pop the champagne and up the bandwidth, because 2012 is the year we finally do away with discs. According to a Bloomberg report on IHS Screen Digest, more viewers will stream movies than watch them on disc, an inflection point that can only mean the relatively quick demise of high-density optical media. Streaming will increase to 3.4 billion titles this year, up from 1.4 billion. Blu-ray and DVD consumption will top out at 2.4 billion.
The study also found that Amazon on Netflix accounted for 94% of all paid movie consumption online.
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Following last month’s news of Netflix’s second original scripted series, “Orange Is the New Black,” Netflix has confirmed that yet another original show, a horror series called “Hemlock Grove,” will begin airing on its streaming service in early 2013.
Netflix has exclusive rights to the 13-episode program, which tells the tale of a young girl’s murder set in a ravaged Pennsylvania steel town, and whose killer could be any one of several odd and frightening people…or creatures. → Read More
Over the past few weeks, you may have noticed that Netflix wants you to “Agree” to something. The company has updated its terms of service, and within the new version, there lies an interesting little tidbit that you may want to review.
From the “Arbitration Agreement”:
These Terms of Use provide that all disputes between you and Netflix will be resolved by BINDING ARBITRATION. YOU AGREE TO GIVE UP YOUR RIGHT TO GO TO COURT to assert or defend your rights under this contract (except for matters that may be taken to small claims court). Your rights will be determined by a NEUTRAL ARBITRATOR and NOT a judge or jury and your claims cannot be brought as a class action.
Awesome. → Read More
Last month, we covered the relaunch of Prescreen, a curated, on-demand video platform. The company, which was founded by ex-Groupon and Zoosk execs, launched last November with the goal of giving movie lovers an easy way to discover independent films, and, in turn, offering filmmakers and producers an alternative, online channel for marketing and distribution.
Earlier this year, Prescreen added former Paramount Pictures and Sony Pictures Entertainment and current Blockbuster exec Tim Wesley along with film financing, sales and distribution company IM Global Founder Stuart Ford. Today, Prescreen is announcing the addition of another industry exec to its advisory board: Founding Netflix exec and former RedBox President, Mitch Lowe. → Read More
Netflix now provides content with captions or subtitles for more than 80 percent of the hours streamed in the U.S. To be clear, this doesn’t mean that 80+ percent of Netflix’s streaming content has captions, but that of all the hours of streaming content watched in the U.S., over 80 percent of it was captioned in some way.
This is a significant improvement, considering that captions were only present on 40 percent of hours streamed in June, and 60 percent in November. → Read More
It seems as though nobody’s a fan of RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook. Last year, I would’ve agreed wholeheartedly. What’s a tablet good for — ahem, an enterprise-style tablet no less — if you can’t natively check email, store contacts, or access a calendar.
But even though much of that’s going to change with the release of PlayBook 2.0 OS, some peeps still can’t get on board. In this instance, it would be Netflix. According to Reuters, Netflix has stated that it has no plans to support the BlackBerry PlayBook or any other BlackBerry device for that matter. → Read More
When I first saw the pitch for Splitflix over the weekend I guffawed a little into my bourbon. The site purports to allow you to “share” your Netflix or Hulu account with a random stranger using a P2P matching system. You and the other person pay half of the cost of the subscription and then enjoy your cheaper streaming accounts.
However, after a bit of digging, as a product it seems solid and as an act of protest, however misguided, it’s sure to get at least a little bit of attention. It’s even technically OK – or at least not prohibited – in the Netflix terms of service: → Read More
Following this month’s debut of Lilyhammer, Netflix’s first scripted series, word is that the company is now preparing to launch a second original show. The company has ordered 13 episodes of Orange is the New Black, a comedy from Jenji Kohan, the creator of Showtimes’s Weeds. The show is based on the memoir of a communications exec who served time for drug charges in a women’s prison.
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As everyone and their dog moves to online production, podcasters have long hunted for a way to monetize their goods. Apps are available that let you sell podcasts for a set price, but what about aggregation over multiple platforms and using varying monetization models? More important, podcasters don’t want to do all the computerin’ to make these things work. That’s why Libsyn created MyLibsyn, a cross-platform (web, iOS, and Android) system for disseminating free and paid content from a central app.
Libsyn has just created something akin to the Netflix of content syndication. Podcasters who join must offer one piece of premium content per month as well as make their back catalog subscriber-only. Although they already offer standalone Android and iOS apps for certain podcasts, MyLibsyn assists in podcast discovery by putting all the popular podcasts in one place and, by ensuring only quality product appears in the app, it reduces the chance that podcast listeners will be disappointed and move on. → Read More
Personal recommendations have always been a part of ecommerce, but there has been little innovation since Amazon introduced retail and product personalization 10 years ago. But with the increasing mountains of data at digital retailers’ fingertips, ecommerce is about to get even more personal.
The fact is that right now there is little iteration from personalized ecommerce beyond what is taking place on Amazon. So you’ll see suggestions of what other shoppers who bought a certain item also purchased, or recommendations to similar items to what you have purchased, but there is a whole world of social data, and even more-in-depth purchase data that can be mined by retailers to help increase sales. → Read More
After some fairly sizable blunders last summer, Netflix suffered for the remainder of 2011, as its stock price took a serious dive and subscribers left in droves. That’s why it was at least a bit of a surprise when Netflix bounced back today in its fourth quarter earnings — beating Wall Street’s projections — in spite of expected losses throughout 2012 thanks to the costs of rolling out its service internationally (among other things). → Read More
Saying 2011 was a rocky road for Netflix would be an understatement, as it split its DVD and streaming offerings into two businesses, then reneged. They also hiked their prices, only to experience a veritable customer revolt, and CEO Reed Hastings was forced to publicly say that they’d made a huge mistake.
Today, Netflix has released its fourth quarter earnings from 2011, and it looks like there’s at least a sliver of good news, as the company beat Wall Street’s forecasts of $0.54 a share and $857 million in revenues, rising instead to $0.73 per share and $876 million in revenues. → Read More
One day after Netflix made its debut in the UK and Ireland, Roku has announced that two of its streaming players, the Roku LT and the Roku 2 XS, are heading to Britain too and are already available for pre-order on Amazon.
The Roku LT, which is billed as the lowest-cost option for streaming video and music directly to a TV, over Wi-Fi and without a PC, retails at £49.99. The Roku 2 XS, which adds casual games like Angry Birds to the offering and also sports an Ethernet, a MicroSD and a USB port, costs £99.99. → Read More
One day after Netflix made its debut in the UK and Ireland, Roku has announced that two of its streaming players, the Roku LT and the Roku 2 XS, are heading to Britain too and are already available for pre-order on Amazon.
The Roku LT, which is billed as the lowest-cost option for streaming video and music directly to a TV, over Wi-Fi and without a PC, retails at £49.99. The Roku 2 XS, which adds casual games like Angry Birds to the offering and also sports an Ethernet, a MicroSD and a USB port, costs £99.99. → Read More
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