Netflix Launches Profiles: New Queue Sharing Feature

Netflix today launched a new Web site feature that enables customers to create up to five separate "profiles" for family members. Internally called the "marriage saver," this should end a lot of arguments over rental choices. The main account is the administrator, and new users can be added in the My Account section of the Web site. You switch between users by using the new profile selector in the header graphic.

Here's how you switch profiles. Click on the arrow next to your name and it will show all of the users on your account (Annie Chow is my wife).

Here's how you manage your profiles on the My Account page:

Each queue can have up to 500 movies (for a total of 2,500!), and you can allocate the number of rentals available to each queue. If you're the only renter in your household, you can use the extra queues to organize movies by genre. If you have children, you can control the movies they watch by setting the maximum MPAA rating.

I've been playing with the feature for the past few days and it's a great addition. My wife watches only a few movies per month (she picks our "date" movies), so I gave her one movie "slot" and now she's building her own queue (I can get rid of all of the "chick flicks" in mine!). I'm hoping this separation will help my recommendations since I've been renting for my wife and kids. Netflix easily handled the changes I made to the number of movies each profile could have, and shipped the right movies out for each account.

I think Netflix is smart to add a lot of cool features (Profiles, Friends List) to help differentiate their service from the increasing competition. The new queue feature is great because it will help upgrade customers to more profitable dvd-by-mail plans ("How come I can only rent one movie at a time, dad?").

Thanks to Heather Anne for tipping me off to this story.

Comments

[Jeff]

I dont see these options. Is this feature still just being tested?

[Jeff]

Interesting. I closed the tab, and then retyped netflix.com. Suddenly it worked. The tabs are different. I don't know if I like them yet.

[Joseph Smarr]

Cool feature, but it's a shame there's no way to move movies from one queue to the other. I set up a new queue for my fiancee (like what you said you did in your article) but now I want to move "her movies" into her new queue, and it appears I have to just open two windows side-by-side, one as me and one as her and then search/add the movies on her side and remove them on my side. Is there no better way? Netflix team-can you add a "move to different profile" option somewhere? :) Thanks!

[Joseph Smarr]

Following up on my previous post, I just tried moving the movies in side-by-side windows and noticed that when you change profiles in one window, it actually changes it in the other window as well. Apparently the current profile is a server preference and not a cookie, if I have two separate windows and I change profiles in one window and hit reload in the other window it will also change. This means among other things that you can't really delete movies from one queue while you're adding to another queue. Oh well, not ideal but understandable. Also I got an error message several times when I tried to bring up a movie detail page (I think partyly because it was sending one profile ID while I was logged in as a different profile or something). It wasn't a 500, but a friendly "netflix has had an error, go to the home page" message. I think it's possible also that when I added a movie in the new profile the post-add page said "this is already in your queue" when in fact it was only in the queue of the old profile--but I didn't try hard to repro this.

Anyway just some quick user feedback. Overall I love the feature! But having 3 rentals to split is kind of mean because I have to either give my fiancee only 1 of the 3 rentals or do the same for myself, and neither outcome is going to be popular! :)

Are you using two different browsers, or just two different windows of the same browser? (Netscape and Internet Explorer, or two instances of internet explorer)

Using two different browsers would allow this to would I'm pretty sure.

"would" should be "work". I need to proof my writing.

[Ian]

Sheesh. This, along with the downloadable queue management software that keeps coming along for Netflix, almost makes me want to leave Blockbuster.

Almost.

[Aron]

I think this functionality has been on the table for quite some time and has been asked about for at least a year. Reed mentioned several "innovations" were on the table recently.

I think Netflix needs to fill in the plans to allow for 2,3,4,5,6,7, or 8 out at a time to avoid the 3/2 = 1.5 rounding problem.

I hope this isn't too complicated for users, I think there should be a substantial minority that would benefit.

This is interesting and may indicate that they are hurrying a bit to get things out these days:

"Q: Can I delete a profile once I've created it?
A: No. At this time, once a profile has been created it cannot be removed from your account. The ability to remove a profile is scheduled for a future release. In the meantime, if you would like to restrict any of your profiles from accessing the Netflix website, you can change their password on the Your Account page. You should also change their number of DVDs assigned out on the Assign DVDs page so you are fully utilizing your Netflix membership."

Hopefully they never begin to slip on the generally excellent bug-free system. There is no doubt the system is getting more complicated.

[Scott]

Great feature, but here's what I'm wondering:

I'm the primary user of my Netflix account. Every so often, someone in my family asks for a rental. It would be nice for them to build their own queue.

What's the best way to set up their access so that I am still taking all 3 of my movies most of the time, but when I want a movie to be pulled from their queue, that happens?

Would I just leave my DVD number set at 3 most of the time, then alter it to 2 for me, 1 for them whenever their movie should be next?

I guess I don't fully understand how Netflix determines which queue to pull from.

Thanks and awesome site!!

Sub accounts can have "0" disks allocated if you wish.

Here's the algorithm for choosing the queue:

When you first allocate disks to a subaccount, the master account will still be credited with the disks that are currently out. The subaccount will show that it will get a shipment the next time the master account returns a movie. As the master account returns movies, the sub accounts will get picks until the master account gets down to its allocation. Once all of the disks out have come from the correct queue, it's simply a matter of shipping from the queue which returned a movie.

If you reallocate the disks, the same thing happens - one or more of the subaccounts will be above their new allocation, and one or more of the subaccounts will be below. As the "over" queues return movies, the shipments will be balanced.

I don't know the mechanism for deciding which subaccount will be chosen if more than one are under their allocation and an over-allocated subaccount returns a disk.

[kevin]

Oh! My! God! I can't believe they actually did this. I wrote in and asked for this more than three years ago. I never thought they'd actually do it. Now I'm in heaven -- I will simply HAVE to upgrade my monthly plan so I can have one queue for classics, one for new releases, one for documentaries, one for rewatching things I've already seen, one for TV shows -- oh yeah, and one for my wife! :)

[J-bird]

I just went thru and created 4 sub accounts for different genres. By using Firefox and IE I was able to quickly look at my main queue and divvy the titles up into the other queues. I created accounts for Comedy, Thrillers, Action & Drama and gave them one DVD out at a time from my 8 at a time plan. I figure I'll keep most of the new releases in my main queue and get a nice assortment of titles from the other queues.

Way to go Netflix!!!!

this is really smart!

i made one for my BF and we may now get rid of his BB acct.

[REN]

Finally, at least a hack way to get around the ridiculous 500 movie queue limit. I just wish there was a way to check items in one queue and move them to another. There might be some problems there with logging in and out of different accounts, and the feature would really only be useful for organizing movies in queues controlled by the same person.

I just looked at it, and it seems like it is set to make each profile a seperate account, with its own name, username, and password. I think NF needs to extend it a bit for people who just want sub-queues for organizational purposes. Maybe they can make sub-queues seperate and remove the concept of changing users and provide options for moving movies between subqueues.

[j-bird]

I have been playing with the queues this weekend and it has been a great help in breaking up my collection into genres. The need to log in on each account bugs me a bit, though. It would also definitely be nice to be able to move movies from one queue to another with the click of a button. It does, afterall warn you if you put a movie in a queue that is already in the main queue.

Also, I had 6 movies get back to Netflix today and for some reason ALL 6 movies that are shipping out to me are marked Shipping on Tuesday. Any idea why the delay? It's unusual that ALL of my returns get put to the backburner for a day, especially when they are set to ship in the queue so early in the day.

I wonder if this has to do with the new queues...

[Charles]

All of my rentals both this week and last week were shipped the day after they were received, rather than the day that they were received as was previously the case.

Sadly, this delay has a dramatic effect on rental throughput:

http://frogcircus.org/netflix/

In my case, it reduces the number of movies I could receive in a month by 1/3rd.

[j-bird]

Does anyone know if this just an isolated issue with the past week, or is this going to become their standard practice? If this becomes standard, I may need to look into (GULP) Blockbuster...

Considering that a feature just rolled out that is centered around queues, I would bet it's isolated, but time will tell.

[REN]

The release-to-shipping delay has been talked about in the "delaying tactics" threads. It happens to me regularly and in a way that keeps me to around 3-4 movies a week (3-out plan). Even with the intentional delays, no other service can compete with them, at least in my area.

[Stan]

Yep, I'm having the same delay "problems" with Netflix right after New Year. They stopped sending the movies out the same day they received them...

I'm also having shipping problems. I returned all three dvds last Thursday. Usually they get there by Friday and they send out the next three in my queue the same day and I get them on Saturday, Monday being the absolute latest. This time however, they've only reported receiving two of them and the two they received apparently arrived two days apart. I am very confused and even the dvd they finally sent me for the first one they received says it will take 3 days to get here. Mind you, the warehouse it is shipped from is less than 30 minutes from my shipping address.

But I'm glad to see other people are having the same problem, because I was about to jump the gun and report a shipping error with the third "missing" dvd that still hasn't come up as being returned.

[Kevin]

Yes, ever since they dropped their prices to compete with the new upstarts, I've noticed a big lag in time from when I send back to when I recieve them.

[John]

I'm in the same boat even with having an return address in the same city. I've done the "missing" option twice now just so I can get the Tuesday releases shiped out without having to wait another month until their available again.

I'm on hold with Netflix right now (so far 20 minutes) and I'm going to ask that they up my queue limit to eight movies until they fix whatever the heck their problem is. Going from 30 down to 18 movies a month doesn't cut it for me.

I just got 3 months at half off for calling the toll-free number and complaining about the service. Also... the three spare "Shipping slots" that said "Next available movie shipping on Wednesday" changed to my top three choices about five minutes after my call. Hmmm...

[Terry]

If you review the Terms of Use your Netflix account http://www.netflix.com/TermsOfUse, under "How Our Service Works," you'll find the following statement:

"In determining priority for shipping and inventory allocation, we give priority to those members who receive the fewest DVDs through our service. As a result, those subscribers who receive the most movies may experience next-day shipping and receive movies lower in their queue more often than our other subscribers."

This makes me angry. Especially since Netflix delays mean I rarely actually have "3-at-a-time." It tells me that as a client who uses the service regularly, and in the manner they promoted, I am less important than their occasional users. Why should Netflix care, when they get their $18.00+ regardless of how many movies they ship?

This policy is a disincentive to remain a loyal Netflix user. I'm looking at other online/by mail services, or going back to my bricks'n'mortar sources.