Netflix Launches Reviewer Blog and RSS Feed
Netflix has quietly launched a new blog for their in-house reviewer James Rocchi. While I sometimes disagree with his reviews, he's saved me from some real bombs. This is a real blog, with comments turned on, so be nice!
He's even (bravely) asking for feedback:
As ever, I'd love -- love to know what you think; comment below, or mail me here.
This is an excellent start for Netflix, a very private company, to interact with the online community. They've been listening to us, adding RSS feeds and the much-requested Friends List feature, but it would be great to have more Netflix bloggers.
Aron noticed a new Netflix RSS feed, James Rocchi's Now in Theaters, in addition to the wide variety of feeds already available.
If you're new to RSS, you can read an old story, Why RSS is Important, or the original Netflix RSS announcement.
If you're looking for a way to read RSS feeds, I still use and recommend Bloglines, a free Web-based reader that even works on my PDA.
I love the queue and the recent activity RSS feeds. My only problem is myself. I only launch my RSS reader like once a week LOL, so I usually forget to see what's going on. Anyway, the folks at Netflix are great as far listening to customers.
Posted by: Heather Anne | December 19, 2004 at 11:58 PM
I love the new additions. The Now in Theaters feed looks like it could use some work, though. HTML markup is visible in Bloglines.
Posted by: Manda | December 20, 2004 at 08:51 AM
Looks to me like Netflix has charted a path to a full 'In Theaters' service. The company does a pretty good job of testing ideas rather then plunging in on a hunch. Clearly, Hastings et al have decided to avoid the wild risk-taking of the 90s .com era.
Posted by: Aron | December 20, 2004 at 01:03 PM
They are using Movable Type's code. Same code behind this site. It really is a good package that covers the 80% of functions generally needed very effectively. I've been playing with it myself and that's my current opinion of it at least. Just try to get a survey up on the site though ;)
Looks like they created a film category for the entries and then Mr.Rocchi forgot\decided not to use it starting with his third entry. LOL. hmm.. Mike knows what I'm talking about at least (maybe).
So nothing custom built for him, just quick and dirty. I got no problems with that, just interesting. Someone here oughta write some creative MT Perl modules for them. Mr Rocchi may want to learn to edit an HTML page in case he wants to keep track of a running item like "Current best hits of 2005". I'm sure Netflix staff wrote a mini-primer so he could do SOME formatting in his entries (headers, lists, etc.). They probably stuck an intern developer on this one ;).
Posted by: Aron | December 21, 2004 at 12:42 AM