UPDATE: Netflix has decided to keep personal profiles!

Netflix emailed me last night:

We wanted to let you know we will be eliminating Profiles, the feature that allowed you to set up separate DVD Queues under one account, effective September 1, 2008.

Each additional Profile Queue will be unavailable after September 1, 2008. Before then, we recommend you consolidate any of your Profile Queues to your main account Queue or print them out.

While it may be disappointing to see Profiles go away, this change will help us continue to improve the Netflix website for all our customers.

If you have any questions, please go to http://www.netflix.com/Help?p_faqid=3962 or call us anytime at 1 (888) 638-3549. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Netflix has chosen to delete any “sub-users” (or profiles) that you created. This was one of the many outstanding features that made Netflix so innovative. If the idea of having two profiles seems foreign to you, think about it like this:

1. You could have multiple queues that movies were delivered from and the ability to spread the total number of movies for your account among these queues.
2. With an additional profile, you could have a separate ratings system for a family member. This makes sense especially when your ratings might not coincide with someone else renting from Netflix.

And now, not only are they removing the feature but they trashing each of those profile’s data sets. All that time and energy spent maintaining those sub-profiles will be wasted when Netflix decides to delete them. The worst part of all of this is that they’re not offering any solutions other than to “print out your queue” and that “your rental history will be merged with the primary account holder’s history.” This is simply unacceptable.

I’ve been a long time supporter of Netflix. The service they provide and the innovation into the way we think about video rentals was simply incredible. Their website has probably the best recommendation system, review system and rating system out there. It was the first usable and true web 2.0 website I can think of.

Not anymore.

Their reasoning for this change is given in the message but it is important to note: this change will help us continue to improve the Netflix website for all our customers. Seriously? This will improve the website for the greater good of all customers? I don’t believe it and I’m not willing to sacrifice my data. I am not the only person who feels this way.

Great customer service would be to retain the profiles and improve support for profiles, offering an even better system for those that use the feature.

Satisfactory customer service would be to offer a migration solution to a new, full-fledged account if there was no way to retain an additional profile on your account.

Netflix’s decision is the worst case scenario. As of September 1st, my data will be deleted.

I’ve already downgraded my plan and begun to phase out my additional profiles. Lucky for me, I’m the primary account holder — I get to keep my data. But what about everyone else?

If you’re like me and looking for alternatives, here is a list of online rental services I’ve found:

• Blockbuster
• CafeDVD
• DVD Overnight
• Intelliflix

A recent article by Michelle Slatalla in the New York Times struck my interest. I’ll summarize briefly, however it’s worth a read on it’s own:

A mother signs up for facebook, searches for her daughter’s name, and slowly begins to befriend all of her friends. Mother states:

“Shockingly, quite a few of them - the friends, not the daughter - accepted my invitation and gave me access to their Profiles, including their interests, hobbies, school affiliations and in some cases, physical whereabouts.”

Daughter finds out, states:

“unfriend paige right now. im serious. i dont care if they request you. say no. i will be soo mad if you dont unfriend paige right now.”

As social applications become more and more popular, you’ll cross that generational bridge. Privacy which was once there due to ignorance will suddenly be violated, leaving everything you chose to make public seen and archived.

Consider the Wayback Machine. When I was 12, I never would have considered or even comprehended the idea that my first website might be cached forever. Were you thinking that way? Most of us didn’t, yet at some point we began to.

Or take another example: Instant messaging. I’m always on. Will my kids, too? Will they filter their away messages or profiles, knowing I might possibly view the information they are making publicly available?

I have a feeling this learning and yearning for privacy will begin to show in more and more web applications, where we’ll not only continue to see “parental controls” but we’ll begin seeing options to filter and control each generations access to the other.