Netflix Kills Friends, Literally
Apparently Netflix has decided the \"friends\" feature of their site is so underutilized that it\'s not worth developing anymore, so they are ditching it entirely:

Friends is a feature on the Netflix Web site that’s been used by less than two percent of all subscribers since we added the feature in 2004. As a comparison, roughly 50 percent of Netflix members are now instantly watching movies and TV episodes on computers and televisions via game consoles, Blu-ray disc players and other devices that have been on the market since 2008.

No company has unlimited resources and we decided to move engineering development time and resources from a little used feature to support and maintain the things that benefit all Netflix members as the service evolves – more devices for streaming and better encoding, for example.

While I certainly can\'t argue with their thinking regarding having limited resources I think there\'s is probably an elephant in the room that isn\'t being discussed; the Friends feature is under used because it\'s extremely difficult to use. Adding friends to your list has always been damn near impossible to find a link for and then it relies on sending an email invite to connect with them, which will inevitably end up in the spam folder. The UX sucks and I\'d be willing to bet that it doesn\'t get used because people don\'t even know it\'s an option.

But so it goes, Netflix is a great service and they\'re certainly on the forefront of making commercial video and the Internet one of the most pleasant experiences around; just don\'t look for your friends anymore.