Netflix Makes Major Update To Friends Feature

A source at Netflix gave HackingNetflix an early look at the first major update to the popular Netflix Friends feature in more than a year. The Friends features shown below will be rolled out to all members over the next few days, so be patient if you can't see them yet.

This screen shows the new Friends homepage:

The Notebook Headlines box shows recent communications from your friends. Also notice the "leave note" purple button on the lower right under each movie.

Netflix has exposed the percentage of similarity calculation between you and your friend (81% in this case):

Notice the sliders that let you scroll sideways and look inside your Friends queue or recently watched movies:

You can view your Notebook:

This is the screen for leaving a note about a movie. Note that you can select which friends get the note by checking a box.

They've updated the movie overview page to include notes and the "Let a Friend Know" option:

The Friends Spotlight feature lets you compare your ratings with your friends for movies you've both seen:

You can take a look at what movies your friend has at home or in his queue:

You can look at your friends most loved movies by category:

Netflix will not be sending Friends updates by e-mail anymore, and will instead use the Notebook feature to inform you of activity and notes from your friends.

So, what do you think of the new features?

Comments

[Dustin L.]

Now if only I could rate movies directly from the Friends pages, my life would be complete. My family uses multiple profiles and when I want to rate a movie my wife rented on her queue, I have to click through to the movie's page in order to rate it. What a pain!

[Super-Bat-Man]

I don't have it yet but it looks like an improvment.

Sure there are a few things that can be improved like the rating thing mentioned above, but they are getting there, building a web app takes time. I imagine years from now they will have it down pretty friggin good.

[tomdobb]

As it's set up now, two things bother me:

1) I have to choose who to leave the note for. There should at least be an "All friends" option. It's annoying to click through a a dozen friends everytime I write a comment. The old comment system was much simpler.

2) You can't edit a comment once you've left it or change who it's sent to. Very frustrating.

[tvindy]

lol. I thought "The Eyes of Tammy Faye" was a fake title for purposes of demonstration. Then I looked it up and saw that it was real. [shudder]

[munkey]

Eyes of Tammy Faye is actually a great movie. Creepy, but in a sweet way.

[fraygos]

Your friend queue listed Reed hastings ... dude that must be sweet ... what does he watch I wonder ....