Netflix Friends

Yesterday word starting flying around the ‘net about a new feature on Netflix’ site: Netflix Friends. I read about it on Hacking Netflix and was definitely interested, but by that point there were already a ton of people asking for invites, and I wasn’t entirely comfortable joining in the “add me!” crowd, so I just tossed a link into Eclinkticism instead.

Of course, what I didn’t think about was MovableType’s automatic Trackback discovery feature, so when I posted my link, Hacking Netflix got pinged — and Mike was kind enough to toss an invite my way after all.

After playing with it a bit last night and this morning, I’m really enjoying this. The first thing I had to do was toss out some invites to people that I knew had NetFlix accounts, and some have already responded and joined in. The more people listed as friends, the more choices there are on your friends page, of course, and it’s been fun watching the recommendations change as more of the few people I invited in join in the fun.

The main NetFlix Friends screen is divided into a few sections. Over to the right is a list of your friends and how many movies they’ve rated, a list of people you’ve invited but haven’t accepted yet, and links to either invite more people in or edit your friends list (delete friends or edit their display name on your list). The main column of the page starts off with a list of movies that your friends have watched and rated recently, with their ratings displayed in purple below the movie. Further down the page (and not displayed in my screen shot) are sections for “New and Upcoming Favorites” (recently released and soon-to-be released films), “Unique Films Your Friends Love” (movies that people you know have given an above-average rating), and “Friends Top Favorites” (four- and five-star ratings from your friends).

Clicking on one of your friends names in the “Your Friends” section of the page takes you to that person’s “Share Page”, with a larger list of what they’ve watched recently on the right side of the page, along with the same “Recently Watched” and “New and Upcoming Favorites” lists (in slightly longer form) from the main Friends page.

One of the nice touches is that once you’re part of the Netflix Friends program, there are little adjustments throughout the Netflix site that tie in to your Friends pages. On any page in the site, if a movie is displayed that one of the people on your Friends list has seen, a little purple person icon appears in the lower-right corner of the movie icon or next to the movie’s name. Also, on individual movie listing pages (which recently gained a “Watch Preview” option — nifty!), there is now a listing towards the bottom right of ratings from any friends who have rated the film, and you can add short one-line blurbs about what you thought of the film.

So far, it’s looking like Netflix has a really good thing going here. If you’ve got a Netflix account and want to join the fun, just let me know!

“Connected” by Alabama 3 from the album Exile on Coldharbour Lane (1997, 6:15).