The last few days this blog has been feeling the aftershocks from this slashdot article and this MSNBC article. As you’ll note, neither of these stories or a recent CNN article on the same subject actually link to this blog, so where is the traffic coming from?

To piggyback on the last entry, this isn’t necessarily a complaint on my part but rather a curiosity in what happens when mainstream media writes a story that interests their audience and leaves them wanting more of the man/woman on the street. Seems like a clear sign that people are using the web to seek out additional sources on subjects. This is the 2006 media reality where even if you aren’t referenced or linked by a mainstream publication you can still be found. Hopefully. Maybe.

The scenario normally is easy to sleuth. If you get slashdotted or digged or another site links you then a line in the referrer stats shows up with a big number next to it. Once we had a German newspaper prominently link a story here and the stats ballooned for the period the link was displayed. This traffic, unfortunately, tends to be very transitory. They come for the story they were interested and they rarely stay. This recent traffic surge, however, has been going on for a few days now and is holding longer than normal and is generating comments on this blog entry from June 26, 2005: Netflix Throttling?

In retrospect, my post itself is pretty weak, basically me just saying: hmm, I hadn’t yet experienced any throttling problems and wondered who else had? As it turns out, this is a really sensitive tooth with both new and seasoned Netflix customers and a lot of people had. At first there there were a couple links and a few comments, but nothing really significant started happening until recently, pretty much after the stories referenced above jammed a rusty knife in an open wound.

I’m not a Netflix customer any more, and it has nothing to do with this alleged throttling issues. Actually, I had the opposite problem of what Netflix customers are complaining about: we didn’t watch enough movies every month. We were the type of customer that Netflix likes. The slow acting movie watching kind who sit on a couple movies for an entire month and barely rack up any postage costs.

Since the news put the light back on Netflix comments have been pouring in, most of them legitimate from users all over complaining about Netflix and these alleged throttling activities. So many comments in fact that this post is well on its way to being the most popular commented thread on this blog ever. Read some of the comments in the Hmm post and you will see exactly what I’m talking about.

Netflix PR, why aren’t you in the trenches of this post commenting on the situation? These are your customers. They are upset and want — no, demand — some answers. Or is it that you can’t? Shouldn’t somebody from Netflix at least show up and say: This is ___ from Netflix and we cannot comment on this issue publically because of pending litigation?

Since there is comment moderation in place for new commenters I’m seeing these comments and they are not spam. Could this be the actions of rival PR agencies for Netflix competitors or are there really that many pissed off Netflix customers? The vast majority of them don’t contain any links in either the body or signature space and though I haven’t checked the IPs I doubt it’s the work of one person/organization using a bunch of assumed names. However, I suppose with a proxy server and some zombie machines it is possible. I should probably run some traces on the IPs and update this post when I get more time.

The blog entry for here is listed as #2-3 on Google: netflix throttling but that is sending about 50-100 hits a day, not exactly on the scale of the activity we’re actually seeing to that specific post. I also found it interesting that the Hmm blog post was above Slashdot and MSNBC, at least at the time of this writing but probably will be moved down now that I’ve linked to them and they didn’t link here.

These customers aren’t just leaving one and two sentence ‘Netflix sucks’ quips, they are going on and on and on. Also, it’s one thing to stop by and visit, but it’s quite another to run out a couple paragraphs worth of comment space. That’s expending time and energy. Care and concern. Customer dissatisfaction.

Now I’m curious if something else beyond these articles have happened recently to draw the return of the major media focus? I realize Netflix is in the midst of a class action lawsuit. Their use of the word “unlimited” rentals is definitely vexing. The restaurant business I once worked for had a buffet that was believed to be “all you can eat” but we were very careful not to actually use those words. I’m pretty sure the advertising never used that either. Some customers took those words very literally and if most people ate nothing but the big ticket items (shrimp, roast beef, etc) then this would definitely create profitability issues.

The same is true if most Netflix customers watched the movies the same day they received them and returned them the next day. If there were 3 movies and they returned 3, then had 2-3 days of mail back and forth time, it’s possible to watch 6 a week or 24 movies a month. That’s a whole lot of postage — if it actually worked that way — but some customers are alleging that this isn’t the case. They are saying processing delays happen around 11 rentals a month.

Beyond the pleasant traffic surge which I hope sticks around awhile, I don’t have any skin in this game, but I’m definitely curious as to what this means for Netflix and what they are doing about it. Have they removed the “unlimited” rentals stuff from their advertising? Will they be doing so soon? Will this be a crushing blow for Netflix and services like theirs? Maybe they can redefine themselves — and save the postage expenses and hassles — as a downloadable DVD service similar to what Vongo is trying to do?

Did this post make you go hmm?

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