The User Advocate

When I read about an interesting new movie in the newspaper, I want to be able to add it to my Netflix account – like “Why We Sing!“  – but because they are too new, they don’t show up.  Their movie suggestion page requests (requires?) that they be already released on DVD, which seems mostly reasonable.  Current movies will 99% be released on DVD sometime, so how to fix it?

Implement one of two new functions/features:

1. Allow people to request movies not yet released and simply put them in a different queued area [probably hard since you can't get 100% of the information for the movie/DVD and adds to staff time searching it out], or,
2. Allow people to save movie searches as reminders with a future date.  So a new movie coming out, like “Why we sing!”, could be saved as a search ‘why we sing’ that will run again in X months.  Then I could choose to have it remind me in three months to re-search and see if it is in the system yet, or postpone it again if appropriate.  That way the user doesn’t have to figure out a way to remind themselves to search and end up forgetting movies that could interest them.

I’ve already forgotten the title of the HBO Doc that Spike Lee made about New Orleans, and by the time it is on DVD I will have forgotten about it completely.  This feature would enhance user loyalty (since they would have to stay a member to have the system remind them) and would make users happy since they wouldn’t need to remember or track new movies separately.

Technorati Tags: movies, netflix, user+advocacy

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 2nd, 2006 at 3:19 pm and is filed under Potential improvements. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.