9 Simple Ways (That Have Nothing To Do With VOD) To Fix Netflix

I’ve had a mini-manifesto (can I call it a ‘minifesto’?) brewing in the back of my mind for awhile now, and it’s time I just put it out there: as a long-time Netflix user (with over 1,300 movie reviews logged), as well as a casual investor/market watcher following their stock (Nasdaq: NFLX) and its fortunes over the past two years, I can’t help but feel like Netflix has overlooked a lot of “low-hanging fruit” opportunities, possibly in favor of its VOD efforts. And most of these are opportunities that remain on the table today, and which I’ll sum up here.

Netflix is, and has been for some time, on the verge of grabbing the coveted “coolest site connected to the Series of Tubes” trophy (handed out annually by the Bunch Athletic Club), with its combination of excellent website and (once upon a time) innovative rental business model.

But more importantly, Netflix is THE cool because it has grown into something its founders most likely never really imagined — it is one of the web’s most thriving and active communities, from a “consumer-generated media” standpoint, with millions of users contributing new review data on a daily basis. At the risk of showering in new media cliche, Netflix was one of the original “Web 2.0″ sites.

That being said, there is a reason why Netflix is “on the verge” and not hoisting that “coolest site” title I referred to — several reasons in fact, all of them being features that Netflix has overlooked, as it has focused a large chunk of its R&D efforts over the past 3-4 years on its various forays into the nascent video-on-demand market.

Hopefully you get the premise — I humbly submit my list of changes/new features Netflix could implement, which would cement its position as THE movie site on the net (not just the top movie RENTAL site), and along the way, give it additional advantages in its wars against Blockbuster and Amazon, not to mention all of the VOD comers.

The suggestions break down into two main categories:

1.) New Stuff for Paying Members — There’s an active community of millions of movie-loving folks on Netflix; it’s time to give them some new tools that will help enhance their Netflix/movie-watching experiences, in the same way that the core Netflix app has.

2.) Stuff for Everyone — Netflix’s UI and database of movies is too great to not open up to everyone. Let people create movie profiles, rate movies, maybe even add movies to a list of movies they want to see — whether or not they’re currently paying customers. Because once you’ve got a few hundred movies reviewed in Netflix, the site only becomes that much MORE powerful.

That being said, without further ado, here’s the 9 Simple Ways To Fix Netflix:

~ NEW STUFF FOR PAYING MEMBERS ~

1.) DVD Library Manager
Think iTunes for movies. Actually, just go out and buy Delicious Monster, and invest in a port of Delicious Library to Windows. Incorporate something for rental management — so your Library could keep track of all the movies you owned and all the movies you’v seen. Rename it something like Netflix Library (I’m sure your marketing wizards can come up with something more catchy), and give it away to all paying members (and offer it free to non-paying users — see #4 for more on that).

2.) Rip-off Learn From Digg & Threadless
In this case, the application of a Digg-style system (submit, vote, highest voted stuff goes top of the homepage) that lets users vote on movies — including submitting movies that are NOT on Netflix. Let users vote and help you determine which foriegn titles people really want to see — much in the same way Threadless lets visitors vote on designs they’d buy.

3.) Consumption Monitor
Something that lets you visualize what you’ve been watching — make it sexy, with big splashy cover art. (NOTE: This one can get a lot more powerful if you implement #4 and 7.)

~ STUFF FOR EVERYONE ~

4.) Accounts for ALL
A Netflix account is a great thing, and that’s only partly due to the whole ‘they mail you movies’ thing. Netflix has always made rating movies easier than anybody else. Tear Down That Wall, Netflix! Let everyone have access to your wide open spaces filled with movies as far as the eye can see.

5a.) Get Googled…
Honestly, is there anybody who’s been around on the web longer, with worse search rankings than Netflix? Obviously the member/pay wall has done them no favors there. But if that wall were torn down, then suddenly all of Netflix’s movie pages are in play alongside IMdB, Yahoo! Movies, and the other sites that dominate Google listings for any given movie (say “Pirates of the Caribbean 2″ for example). Toss in some more data (see 5b) and Netflix quickly becomes one of THE top rankings for just about any/all movies in its index. I can’t say for sure, but something helps me that would have a positive effect on business.

5b.) …and be the New Metacritic/Rotten Tomatoes
Why nobody’s built out a Web 2.0 version of Metacritic and/or Rotten Tomatoes is beyond me. How many people are reviewing movies now, between traditional critics, web critics, bloggers, etc? And if Netflix were to get behind something like Microformats and/or Structured Blogging, I’m sure they could get a more than a few people on board as well, which would only make the review aggregation process that much easier. Heck, if you’re afraid of doing it yourself, partner with someone like Technorati, to get some extra blogsavvy behind it.

6.) Sell DVDs Better
How does Netflix not make it easier to buy any of the movies on there? They sell cheap, used DVDs, and as far as I know, that’s it. Why? Would it be that problematic or difficult to just work out an affiliate sales relationship with Amazon or any of the other online DVD merchants out there? If I’ve told Netflix I like three movies, and there is an obvious fourth that I would also like, it seems crazy to me that they wouldn’t take steps to sell me that DVD and make some change from it.

7.) Online Movie Trailers & Video
(Ok, so this one does technically involve video-on-demand. But I’m talking about a much smaller scale of VOD than what Netflix has been aspiring to.)
Yet another one that I’m shocked hasn’t been implemented yet. Just add the trailers for all the stuff I want to see, in a new “Trailers” tab on the main UI. With recommendations based on my previous choices, and the ability for me to rate trailers and my interest in seeing any of the movies advertised (only providing that much more data to Netflix’s coffers.) Is the prospect of serving some 2-minute video clips that daunting for someone like Netflix? (If yes, then I’d definitely suggest they step away from any VOD plans.)

8a.) Help Me Find Movies in the Theatre
Much like #7 — how expensive/hard is it to do movie listings? I have to imagine there are already companies doing it — data feeds you could form partnerships/pay to tap into. With your knowledge of MY movie preferences AND what movies are playing near me, it seems like you could direct me to quite a few movies, and help sell quite a few tickets along the way. This has to be monetizable on some level for a site/company the size of Netflix.

8b.) Be There With Me After — To Get a Review
Once you start down this road of getting really into current movies, there’s obviously no need to abandon your current policy of collecting reviews as soon as people are done with a movie; heck, you could let them choose in their preferences if they wanted to get an email the day after they booked tickets, to see what they thought of the movie. You could even step it up a notch, and hit them up on SMS — and provide real-time, opening day crowd reaction from a Netflix Live Buzztracker.

9.) Embrace Your Technology Roots
Contests that reward code solutions are a good start — but give us some sweet APIs, to utilize Netflix’s vast (and if you follow these other steps, only getting more vast) databases of movie info and reviews. Give us a site whose membership is open to everyone, not just paying customers, and some data to work with, and see what the tech-savvy masses can deliver.

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In closing, let me stress — I’m one of the die-hard Netflix users, not someone waffling between Netflix and Blockbuster, or just a tech geek with an axe to grind or Diggs to seek.

I know that most of the items I list above are more easily said than done. I’m not suggesting Netflix rush out and try to do ALL of this at once. Quite the contrary, I’m merely suggesting that there is an abundance of things Netflix could be doing, all of which would help to improve its competitive position within the space.

As someone who’s invested a lot of their own time in Netflix, and feels at least somewhat locked in — with no good way to extract my 1,300 reviews from Netflix — I want to see the red envelope purveyors get better. And for me — barring a sudden flood of cheap bandwidth — that doesn’t have a lot to do with VOD for at least another 2-3 years.

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P.S. At least if I’m tin-foil hatting on Netflix, I’m not the only one: