Netflix Draws My Ire Once Again/IMDB Better Watch It

I'd slowly been amassing Friends on Netflix (who happen to be my friends in real life). I don't think many people really knew that was an option on the site. Emphasis on "was." About two days after logging my eleventh Friend, Netflix took the service away! This had been coming for quite a while, it turns out, but I was no less distraught. I loved the Friend feature. There were user reviews to read (which can easily kill 10-15 minutes. Why would you rate a movie 1-star just because it has subtitles?). You could check out user submitted lists. You could see how your Friends' tastes reflect against your own. Best of all, you could check out your Friends' queues to judge them silently to yourself or to get ideas for films you'd like to put on your queue. I loved checking out to see what new movies people had rated.

But no more.

Netflix gave some BS about not enough people using it to warrant wasting engineers on the upkeep. My thinking is, if the system is already in place, couldn't they just leave it as is most of the time? They claim only about 2% of Netflix users used the feature, but it's not like they really pushed it. Once, it was a link at the top of the page, but before it was taken away, one had to scroll to the very bottom of the page and click on nearly the last word, "Friends."

Also, did they expect Facebook-type success? It's a pay service. Netflix has over 10 million subscribers. That's still 200,000 people using the service. Not an insignificant number.

I'm not going to be canceling my subscription because I love movies and Netflix is the best, most convenient way for me to get them. But I have friends all over the country that are watching movies and I want to know what they think (and I don't want my Facebook feed filled with that information).

I tell you what, Netflix... add a "Scramble" button the the queue so I can randomly and easily mix up all of my movies and we'll call it even. For now.
And while I'm attacking my favorite things, IMDB better be careful. At work last night, I accessed the site only to find that it was different. But not in a good way. Pictures were taking over the page, the links on the side were moved to the bottom, the page was endless. The entire interface was terrible. It hasn't hit my home computer yet, but I fear it will. I hope IMDB designers think better of this change or at least gives us the option to return to the "classic" look, because if it doesn't, well god help us all.