About This Blog

There may be some confusion among new blog readers about this blog - and so i've added a little explanation to the blog sidebar that I hope will shed some light on things.

There are a few additional points i'd like to make:

(a) This blog is about the development of community features; this is not customer service. While other readers can sometimes help you solve a problem (and i encourage this), i can't really address issues like shipping oddities, broken discs, account things, and so on. I can, however, fix website bugs (or send them to people who can) - and to the degree you think something is a weird bug that is persistent and probably affects many people, I do like hearing that. (and no - lack of Mac-based instant watching is not technically a bug...) Already, you guys have identified a number of bugs that I missed, and we've been able to fix them quickly. In the cases where you are seeing a debilitating issue, information about your OS and browser really help.

(b) Our web development isn't really a democracy (i think it's more of a republic... ) i value your input and feedback and i combine it with many other sources of information to determine what I build and when. Y'all are an asset and a great resource, but please understand that I don't just build what the blogging majority (or the vocal minority) suggest. We have methods to discover if features are needed by large segments of our users, but this blog isn't that. You guys are a self-selected, usually advanced, relatively technical, pretty dern smart, movie-loving group. (this is what I like about you). But you must realize you are special and not necessarily representative of all our members. But I really do hear you and your insightful/compelling arguments are fantastic.

(c) I have limited ability to get my partners to contribute here - i'm on the team building the website, and my associates bring you things like Instant Watching, the Queue, Recommendations, Ratings, and so on. They all read this blog and your comments, and will post occasionally, but not to the extent that I do. I only write about what I know and what I am doing. When I don't respond to comments about other things, it's only because i have little value to add. Which leads me to...

(d) Netflix doesn't "hate you" when we either don't respond directly to your comment or don't implement the feature you want most. Netflix in general (and me, in particular) value you highly. I respond directly to comments once in awhile, but somewhat randomly I think. If I do comment to you, it's because something you said has nicely sparked a conversation. And finally...

(e) I'm doing this blog to help me in my efforts to develop these features that explore the value of community in movie discovery. To the degree it's helpful, fun and relatively civil, i'll keep doing it. if it descends into name calling, poor behavior, and a general lack of decorum, i'll probably give up. So far i have been deeply impressed with all of you and the quantity of good thinking and helpful input.

So thank you, and i hope this helps give context to what is going on here.