So you’ve probably all heard about Netflix and their strange (and post hoc) announcement concerning their DVD mailing service.  Let’s take a look at what they are actually saying.

First of all they are discussing the separation of mailing and streaming into two separate business entities, at least as concerns the public.  If they are in fact creating two business entities in the legal sense, perhaps that is preparatory to selling off the mailing side of things?  Oh, I shouldn’t speculate.

Now in dividing these two sides they have created a need to give each its own name.  Of course since Netflix was originally a mailing service the mailing service will keep the Netflix name and… what?  Oh, they did?

Ok, so because Netflix has such strong brand recognition and they recognize that “DVD by mail may not last forever” they want to use that strong brand recognition to continue the success of the side on which they are betting: streaming.

Since the mailing side is what made them what they are they would of course want to create a name for that service which is immediately recognizable, sensible, and pretty fucking cool.  Qwikster, of course, is none of these.

We chose the name Qwikster because it refers to quick delivery.

I can only assume it’s a clever combination of the English word quick and the ever popular delivery site Napster but employing kewl spellin stuph.  Except Napster is more like streaming.  Am I getting this right?  Sending things through the US postal service is considered quick when compared to streaming?  Knot kewl.

While the by-mail service may not in fact last forever, it’s pretty clear it is dead to Netflix.  C’mon, they named it in part after a dead music sharing service.  If they were really trying to be cool they could have named it zombiesbymail or something.

Perhaps I’m being too critical.  Perhaps I’m harshing their mellow.  After all this is not likely to have a large impact on their customer base, right?

A negative of the renaming and separation is that the Qwikster.com and Netflix.com websites will not be integrated. So if you subscribe to both services, and if you need to change your credit card or email address, you would need to do it in two places.

Really?  That’s necessary?  Because I have an Amazon.com account and I can use that to sign into Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr or Amazon.whothefuckknows and I can buy shit and I can rate things and those ratings carry over to the other sites.

Our view is with this split of the businesses, we will be better at streaming, and we will be better at DVD by mail.

I have to wonder what could have evoked this alleged view.  I know, you’re wishing Amazon had done that instead of using all those tabs on their sites.  Can we still buy books there?  Yes, actually the book store is still their flagship.

Meh.  We can let history decide, but my prediction is that this maneuver will land them face down in the mud.  And by them I mean poor Andy Rendich who got stuck heading the zombie fork in the Netflix road.