When Netflix announced it was spinning its DVD delivery service off into Qwikster and only offering streaming through Netflix, the Internet flew into a frenzy. Customers began cursing the company, feeling doubly betrayed by the latest in a long line of drastic changes by the company.
Initially, Netflix had split its services into distinct DVD and streaming services, but kept them both within the same company. This time, however, users would need separate accounts, separate queues and separate charges on their credit cards in order to enjoy both physical discs and streaming. News sites and blogs, however, focused on the future of the company, seeing the split almost as a death knell for DVDs, if not for Netflix as a whole. Some of the theories being floated around are that Netflix is looking to sell to another company. The two top companies people seem to be looking at are Facebook, one of the major hubs of any good social media marketing campaign, and Amazon, the biggest online retailer in the world. Why these two?
Facebook’s latest Open Graph update has provided content providers easy access to the company’s hundreds of millions of users in addition to the powerful marketing capabilities of the platform. When Facebook users perform any action, their friends are alerted to it in the ticker, which allows media providers to increase the chances of people using their services. This would be a perfect platform for Netflix to use and a good addition to Facebook’s arsenal. Earlier this year, Facebook announced a forthcoming streaming movie service. Though that service doesn’t seem to have materialized, it could be a glimpse into the possible future of Facebook, which could gain the library, licenses and infrastructure already owned by Netflix, allowing it to quickly integrate streaming movies into its already robust social services.
Amazon
Amazon’s streaming video service already offers current television shows and many blockbuster movies, but they’re all on a per-view or purchase basis. Further, the library of content Amazon has is only a fraction of that offered by Netflix. The only real drawback to Amazon purchasing Netflix before was that, if they had a physical presence in the states they service—as they would if they offered physical DVDs to customers—they would be required to charge sales tax on orders, eliminating one of the main benefits of ecommerce. With Netflix spinning Qwikster off into its own service, however, that difficulty is eliminated. Netflix’s content coupled with Amazon’s considerably larger pocketbook would give both companies a serious boost and help Amazon secure another area of ecommerce dominance.