This site is rarely updated. benbrophy.com is more up-to-date. - Ben
Throttling Netflix
I'm a big Netflix user. Lisa and I don't have a TV, but we watch a TV show nearly every night thanks to our Netflix subscription. A while back I read about their strategy of "throttling" customers who rent a lot of movies. Apparently Netflix starts losing money if you rent more than 5 movies per month, so when you do that you start seeing slowdowns. It takes them an extra day to receive that movie. It takes them 24 hours to put a new movie in the mail when it used to take them 30 minutes.
Here's a great discussion from Stanford on the Netflix throttling strategy from Stanford.
Throttling is a big mistake for Netflix. I used to proselytize people left and right about the benefits of Netflix. I gave a few Netflix gift certificates as stocking stuffers one christmas. I would go on and on about how great it was. But now my relationship with Netflix is strictly business. I'll take my throttlings, but I'm not offering any hugs in return. Second I see I better deal, I'll be parting ways with Netflix.
Tags: Netflix