Netflix isn’t perfect, to be sure. Its shipping and receiving are pretty spot-on. But the Web interface needs a little oomph. It’s fine, overall; but its search functionality is weak, and I often end up on imdb.com when I really need to nail down the details on an obscure title. Netflix’s theoretically intelligent assessment of the films I might enjoy, and its engage-the-user strategy of asking me to vote or comment on the films I have seen, falls flat in my estimation. I’d trade both of those user tools for answer lists with sortable columns, and a better date-searching tool. Ninety thousand titles is a truly impressive collection. I’ve only searched for a few I want that haven’t been available. And the advent of streaming video-on-demand (about 5,000 titles and growing) is a great development. That has to be the future of Netflix as a business.
But back to the online queue! My queue is a thing to behold. I massage it with drag-and-drop or numeric reordering, and make strategic additions from certain corners of the film and TV worlds. Is a 184-title queue a bit too long? It’s just that adding to it and rearranging it is soothing. It’s like playing a video game that will result in something real.
Sure, rearranging my Netflix queue is the moral equivalent of filing my nails or doodling while on a conference call. And my time would be better spent turning in my expense reports. But I like knowing that sixty or eighty films down the line, I might get a Zatoichi, the Blind Samurai movie and the same day as High Sierra.
Do I want to pair Ghost Dog with A Clockwork Orange or Cool Hand Luke? Should Babette’s Feast arrive right on Thanksgiving, or should I pair it with The Dead at Christmas? Maybe John and Yoko’s Year of Peace is misplaced at Slot 161, and should replace Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst in Slot 31? These are real considerations.
I see little Web applications called widgets, are available even now, so you can pump your Netflix queue out onto your Web page or social networking profile for the world to see. Mine is, and will remain, a small, private (and entirely guilty) pleasure. Yeah—like I want anyone to know I rented Logan’s Run and Soylent Green at the same time!
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