You'd have to be living under a rock to not have heard about Netflix's problems. After deciding to separate their streaming and dvd-by-mail plans, they took a huge dive in their stock. Now, just like when you take the pills away from a crazy old man, they are retaliating by doing something very irrational: creating a secondary site. Below is a short blurb by the CEO of Netflix:

“[W]e realized that streaming and DVD by mail are becoming two quite different businesses, with very different cost structures, different benefits that need to be marketed differently, and we need to let each grow and operate independently. It’s hard for me to write this after over 10 years of mailing DVDs with pride, but we think it is necessary and best: In a few weeks, we will rename our DVD by mail service to “Qwikster”. We chose the name Qwikster because it refers to quick delivery. We will keep the name “Netflix” for streaming.”

First off, a little lesson from Business 101: If you already have an immensely popular brand name, and you are creating a second site that used to have some association with this particular brand name, it would make sense to name this new secondary site something resembling the brand name so that people will associate it with the good name of the company. Why not name their streaming site, “Netflix Online” or their secondary site something that involves the words Netflix? You spend years establishing Netflix as a trusted brand and now you're coming out with a second site that has a completely new name, that people who aren't up to knowledge on their internet news will have no idea is associated with Netflix. What's even more embarrassing is that the company had to pay some lucky twitter user for his domain name since he already took the name Qwikster. Are you surprised you're not the only ones clever enough to come up with Qwikster?

Even more frustrating is the news that Qwikster will not have any integration with your current Netflix account. That means those thousands of films you rated on Netflix will be lost, and that 500 film queue of yours will have to be redone.

I'm aware in this day and age a majority of people uses streaming, but there is still a good portion of their customers that like getting their dvds in the mail. They are pretty much giving these users the shaft, and the CEO has made it clear that they are only interested in a future with streaming. In as little as 4 years Qwikster will sell off all their dvds, forcing their users to switch back to Netflix, and just deal with the lag of streaming. Too bad blockbuster is not clever enough to capitalize on their nemesis' misfortune...

The one good aspect of Qwikster is game rentals. Gamefly doesn't have the best reputation, and this is a good opportunity to make a quick buck on a company that has been the only good source of game rentals in the industry. Plus, with the added bonus of Qwikster also having movies, it pretty much makes Gamefly seem irrelevant.

As someone who loves discovering new films on Netflix, but also has a horrible internet connection, I hope changes are made to the way they handle Qwikster, and I really hope they don't plan to abandon us few who can't afford top internet speeds.