It went from Netflix to Qwikster and back to Netflix in less than a week. I won’t get into the details about the recent Netflix drama (you can read the full story here on Mashable) but the reality is that the social customer and their growing influence is forcing business to change, adapt and do more than just pretend to listen. in fact, since Netflix made the price increase announcement, there have been over 1,000 conversations on Twitter, Blogs, forums, etc; which resulted in more than 85 million impressions. According to Gigaom, the company ended the quarter with 23.8 million subscribers in the third quarter, which is down 810,000 from the previous quarter. The final numbers were lower than the 24 million subscribers that Netflix had forecast it would end up with halfway through September. Additionally, Netflix was lower on both its streaming and DVD sides of the business. They ended the quarter with 21.45 million streaming customers, compared to the 21.8 million it expected. It also had 13.93 million DVD subscribers, compared to the 14.2 million forecast.
Here is Reed Hastings, Netflix CEO apologizing to customers and making a significant announcement (blog post here). Apparently, those 810,000 customers wanted more than just an apology.
