Apple Stock vs. Netflix Stock over past 5 Years: http://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&...
NetFlix: America's Most Underestimated Company
41–50 of 126 posts
Re: NetFlix: America's Most Underestimated Company
#42I love Netflix. They're a role model for other companies, and for me as a person.
Netflix has succeeded on the strength of two things: integrity and ambition.
They genuinely care about their customers. They work extra hard to make sure people who give them money are happy to do it. In their call centers, CSRs are friendly and empowered. They're instructed to err on the side of doing things that are most likely to make a customer happy, instead of pissing people off with stupid "it's policy!" behavior. In their distribution centers, they have a hardcore quality control culture that goes to great lengths to ensure that mailed out DVD's correctly match a customer's order.
Contrast this with their dying competition, who never once gave a damn about customer satisfaction. Who, indeed, codified policies whose direct result was to enrage customers.
As for ambition, Netflix has continually worked hard to make the service the very best it could be, opening more and more distribution centers to minimize the wait between returning and receiving your DVDs. Despite having every reason to rest on their laurels, they decided they'd also be the Netflix to their Blockbuster, going deep on the Watch Instantly strategy that's redefining their business. Instead of waiting for someone else to come along and make them obsolete, Netflix grabbed the bull by the horns.
This is one of the rare moments of modern capitalism producing something truly excellent, on its merits, based on the needs of the market. If only we could see similar disruption in larger and even more corrupt industries.
Honestly: I love these guys.
Re: NetFlix: America's Most Underestimated Company
#43It's too bad there's no way to assign a universal "reputation" score to the various pundits out there so that readers can better assess the value of their published predictions. Michael Pachter, for instance, has been wrong on a number of occasions (he predicted Sony would dominate the current console generation and Nintendo would languish and MSFT would be #2 -- at least he got the last part right). Like the iPad wh…
> the consumers never wrote off Netflix and that's pretty much all that matters.
Not that I necessarily wrote off netflix, but I did jump ship to Blockbuster's online service for short while when it was first introduced. The ability to return the movies I got in the mail with any movie at their physical store was a pretty nice feature, in addition I got to rent one game per month as well.
A couple of months later, blockbuster started changing their policies and I switched back to trusty netflix.
When blockbuster first introduced their service I thought that netflix might be in trouble...but my unpublished prediction was unfounded! ;)
Re: NetFlix: America's Most Underestimated Company
#44I love Netflix. But Apple is gaining on them. At some point I might switch, or just use both. I'll certainly never sign up for cable tv.
I think Apple's store has some great ideas, but I'm not going to pay for a "one time rental" type of service when Netflix is an "all you can eat" type of service. I realize their "Instant" offering is still not as large as their DVD offering, but it's growing all the time. I currently have over 100 items in my "play it now" queue. I routinely switch items from my DVD queue to the "play it now" queue, so it appears th…
I've stuck with Netflix thus far because nobody can compare with their vast catalog of movies (DVD or streaming). However when it comes to value, there are months when I might watch many movies and really get the value out of Netflix's "all you can eat" structure, but other months I might not watch any movies and still pay the full subscription price. I think it probably averages out to cost about the same as Apple's pay-per-view system, so to me it really comes down to who has the best catalog of movies.
Re: NetFlix: America's Most Underestimated Company
#45This is a tangential pricing-related question: Why does Netflix, which is solving some hard and interesting problems both on the technical (delivery/algorithms) as well as business side (licenses etc) only charge $9-$15 a month whereas online services like dating sites and project collaboration SaaS tools that are arguably much easier to build get away with charging anywhere from $30 to $60 a month? If pricing is abo…
I will take a shot at this. Netflix does have competition, from RedBox and pay-per-view on cable. People probably spend about $9-$15 on those competing services.
When it comes to those SaaS and dating services: Never underestimate the value assigned to hooking up or getting paid. People will pay if it thinks it will help them make more money or meet someone.
The question I have is how is Match.com still charging $30/month when Plenty of Fish is still pretty much free?
Re: NetFlix: America's Most Underestimated Company
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've seen such a website somewhere but can't find it. It was in relation to an apple prediction but there were plenty of others there too (inc political).
your probably thinking of http://wrongtomorrow.com/ which no longer seems to be up - and it never seemed to get much traction anyways.
Yes, that's the one. Thanks
from Google cache: Site: http://bit.ly/9JiRrz & FAQ: http://bit.ly/9cQeTb
Re: NetFlix: America's Most Underestimated Company
#47Argh, a truly good article marred by one thing: the assertion that BitTorrent is a competitor for NetFlix. This notion just won't die - I use BitTorrent, sure - to get stuff I can't pay for, because nobody is interested in selling it to me. But I'd much, much, much rather toss NetFlix their $9 every month to deliver what I want without the hassle of BitTorrent, and that's the canard that the entertainment industry ju…
You might have morals and/or value your time, but actually I think the article is dead on that they're competitors. A large segment of the population chooses to pirate instead of pay. If BitTorrent ceased to exist (as a technology - not the company), NetFlix would almost certainly gain some customers.
A large segment of the population chooses to pirate instead of pay
Is there any numbers backing this up?
Re: NetFlix: America's Most Underestimated Company
#48This is a tangential pricing-related question: Why does Netflix, which is solving some hard and interesting problems both on the technical (delivery/algorithms) as well as business side (licenses etc) only charge $9-$15 a month whereas online services like dating sites and project collaboration SaaS tools that are arguably much easier to build get away with charging anywhere from $30 to $60 a month? If pricing is abo…
I will take a shot at this. Netflix does have competition, from RedBox and pay-per-view on cable. People probably spend about $9-$15 on those competing services. When it comes to those SaaS and dating services: Never underestimate the value assigned to hooking up or getting paid. People will pay if it thinks it will help them make more money or meet someone. The question I have is how is Match.com still charging $30/…
how is Match.com still charging $30/month when Plenty of Fish is still pretty much free?
100% branding and brand ranks probably at the top when it comes to things that people perceive as "serious" - like finding a mate.
Re: NetFlix: America's Most Underestimated Company
#49I have been a Netflix subscriber since February 2006. It is the only service that I have subscribed to for that long, and the only one I never, ever ponder unsubscribing to.
I've subscribed for as long, and Netflix occupies the same place in my lifestyle. It's a testament to just how great the core service is that they could make some very bad decisions, such as removing the entire social subsystem of friends, lists, and notes, yet not once did the thought of canceling cross my mind.
Re: NetFlix: America's Most Underestimated Company
#50This is a tangential pricing-related question: Why does Netflix, which is solving some hard and interesting problems both on the technical (delivery/algorithms) as well as business side (licenses etc) only charge $9-$15 a month whereas online services like dating sites and project collaboration SaaS tools that are arguably much easier to build get away with charging anywhere from $30 to $60 a month? If pricing is abo…
I think it's a sweet spot. For $9 a month my wife and I don't need to discuss it. For $30 a month recurring, one we'll discuss it, and two, we'd better see a lot of value.
The price is at a point where even if we're busy and don't watch more than 1 or 2 movies that month, we won't mind, because of the convenience of having them instantly available via streaming, and knowing that the price is low.
It's low effort, high convenience.