Netflix Was Totally Kidding About Qwikster

If Netflix CEO Reed Hastings was running for office, this would be the time to call him a flip-flopper. After last month’s announcement that Netflix would split into two companies — Netflix for online streaming and Qwikster for DVD-by-mail service — Hastings said on Monday morning that those plans have been scraped. “It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs,” said Hastings in a statement on the Netflix blog. “This means no change: one website, one account, one password… in other words, no Qwikster.” Certainly @qwikster must be heartbroken.

“We underestimated the appeal of the single web site and a single service,” Netflix spokesman Steve Swasey told New York Times media reporter Brian Stelter. “We greatly underestimated it.”

Qwikster was set to begin roll-out soon, and in his initial statement on Sept. 18, Hastings made it seem like something that was necessary for the future.

“Some members will likely feel that we shouldn’t split the businesses, and that we shouldn’t rename our DVD by mail service. Our view is with this split of the businesses, we will be better at streaming, and we will be better at DVD by mail,” he wrote. “It is possible we are moving too fast — it is hard to say.” Apparently, it’s not that hard to say anymore.

[via NetFlix, NYT/Media Decoder]

[Photo: Getty]

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