In 2009 Netflix held a contest challenging teams of developers to create an algorithm to increase the accuracy of its film recommendations by 10 percent. The award was $1 million, and it turns out Netflix pretty much flushed that money down the drain. The company doesn't use the winning algorithm. So, why?
The saga of RIM and its epic spiral down into the pits of irrelevancy continue to worsen as Netflix announces it has no plans to bring its services to BlackBerry smartphones or the newly updated PlayBook. It really sucks to be RIM right now.
Remember the whole Netflix/Qwikster debacle from a few months back? After making some truly blockheaded moves, Netflix backed off and undid a bunch of what got them in trouble. Now they have finally announced that the $7.99 DVDs by mail only plan is back, returning things to where they were six months ago.
If you can't beat 'em, join throw tons of money in their face until they relent from drowning in all that cash. Word on the street is that Verizon really wants to buy Netflix; instantly adding 23 million customers to its market share. A buyout would be one hell of an entrance into the video streaming biz for Verizon.
Poor Netflix. Things were going so well, until it decided to increase prices, anger the Internets by spinning its DVD-by-mail service into Qwikster and then changing its mind on the split a month later. Of course, 810,000 subscribers would leave.
For all the complaining people have been doing about Netflix lately, they don't really have any ships to jump to. After all, there are no competitors that offer a comparable streaming catalog. But Skype's founders are looking to change that.