Netflix has been on a bit of roller coaster ride as a company, as most people who subscribe to the service or love movies and follows such things already know.  The story is not unlike a bad M. Night Shyamalan movie; it’s got twists, turns, and is often based on such lame and asinine premises that one just has to laugh at the crazy plot points.

But rather than chronicle all the wrong moves Netflix has been making as of late, such as separating their streaming and DVD rental business into two Web sites and now backtracking on that decision (interestingly, in a letter not from CEO Reed Hastings as the other infamous letters were, but just from “Netflix”), let me offer the letter I think Netflix should have written to their customers in light of their recent price hikes.

One could argue the price increases were the wrong decision as well, but I’m not convinced of that.  In fact, I think there’s an argument to be made that Netflix did NOT, in fact, raise their prices.  This point will soon become clear.  Here is the letter:

Dear Netflix Customer,

As you know, Netflix’s streaming service has grown by leaps and bounds over the past two years, and we now currently offer thousands of movies and TV shows that you can stream instantly to almost every device in your household.  From the iPhone to the big screen TV, Netflix built in to hundreds of devices that make using our streaming service so convenient.

As a company we continue to invest in our streaming service, and we strongly believe streaming is the way most customers prefer to consume their entertainment.  However, in order to continue to invest in expanding the number of titles and overall quality of our streaming services, we have decided to adjust our pricing model.  In most cases, the new prices will not change how much you pay on a monthly basis for Netflix.

You may have noticed that our streaming service has grown tremendously in the past few years.  In fact, on a plan-by-plan basis, the average customer now consumes [INSERT % HERE] more total titles today than three years ago.  The number of titles available, the convenience and the high quality our streaming offers are a testament to that.  As you can imagine, while the number of customers streaming content has grown considerably, those who receive DVDs by mail are holding on to them longer.  Given the choice, our customers have demonstrated to us that they prefer to stream rather than wait for a DVD.

So, in order to continue to invest in and expand on our streaming services, we are going to adjust our pricing model.  In essence, we are leaving our prices the same, but reducing the number of DVDs out at a time on your account by one.  In other words, if you had a streaming plus 3 DVDs out at a time subscription, you will be switched to a streaming plus 2 DVDs out at a time.  Your monthly rate will not change.

Of course, if you prefer to only receive DVDs by mail and not stream any content, there will be no changes to your account and you will continue to pay the same rate.  We also have streaming-only options for those who prefer that option as well.

We believe these changes reflect the value we’ve added to the Netflix streaming service over the past few years, and will allow us to continue to invest in and add further value.

We sincerely appreciate your business and I invite you to write back with any comments, feedback or questions you might have about these changes.  I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Reed Hastings
CEO and co-founder, Netflix

* Note: The pricing changes suggested in this letter reflect the pricing changes Netflix actually made; they’re simply presented in a different light.

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Today I went to add Ayn Rand: In Her Own Words to my DVD wish list on Amazon.com. A few minutes later I received an e-mail stating that my order was received and would be shipped soon. I did click ‘Wish List,’ didn’t I? How was I suddenly buying this DVD? Luckily, I caught this in time to canceled the order. No harm done.

But darn it, I was pretty sure I had clicked the ‘Add to Wish List’ button. On the other hand, I found it difficult to contemplate how Amazon could make an error like that. I figured it was user error, and I went back and retraced my steps to figure it out.  Here’s what I discovered:

Upon first loading the page, the ordering box looked like image you see at the right. Now, I’m pretty fast with my mouse and am very familiar with the Amazon site, so I quickly went over to click the ‘Add to Wish List’ button, and then moved my eyes to another open window and thought that was the end of it.

So how did it the ‘Buy now with 1-Click’ button get clicked? It turns out that the image above is only part of the story; shortly after the page is fully downloaded into the browser (I’m using Chrome on Windows 7), some more options appear in the right-hand ordering box, notably a ‘Get it:’ option (shown at right) with the ability to select between Saturday delivery or Tuesday delivery.

I love this ability to choose shipping options just before clicking the 1-Click ordering.  It’s pretty convenient.  However, because this portion of the page doesn’t load until the rest of the page loads, it actually pushes the content below it down a few pixels.  Enough pixels, in fact, that the time between when I saw and meant to click ‘Add to Wish List’ and when I actually clicked and moved on to other things, the ‘Buy now with 1-Click’ button had moved under its place and that was the button that was actually clicked.

The image shown to the right of this paragraph illustrates what that order box part of the page looks like before and after the page is fully rendered.  Comparing the two side-by-side, you can clearly see that the ‘1-Click’ button has moved down to exactly the part of the page where the ‘Add to Wish List’ button is in the image above it. Viola! I figured out what happened.

So let that be a UI design lesson for all you developers out there. Or perhaps it’s a lesson for me to stop surfing the ‘net like a maniac.

Either way, designers should  be on the lookout for how a page loads in real time, behaves over time, and how that impacts the user experience. You don’t want to accidentally be buying stuff on behalf of your customers.

I’ve had a few months under my belt now as an audio podcast producer and my two shows, The Movie Film Show and The Independent Entrepreneur, are off to a modest start. Bootstrapping these shows with almost no budget is not easy and the struggle to grow my audience has been, at times, frustrating.

But I’ve learned a lot so far about what works, and I’m sure there’s plenty more to do. Most importantly, I’m realizing the need to create mobile-friendly versions of my shows.

I’ve set up my shows on a Wordpress Blog using Blubrry’s PowerPress plug-in, which is terrific. It’s saved me an enormous amount of development time and allowed me to focus on creating content. One of the services Blubrry provides is a measurement tool that shows how many downloads my shows have received, including what form people are downloading them.

I’ve produced twenty episodes of The Movie Film Show, and I finally have enough data to draw some conclusions. But first, the facts:

Few people listen on the Web. Only 7% listen through the Web site’s flash player tool. The rest are people downloading the shows through iTunes and on their mobile devices.  In fact, 53% of downloads come from applications like iTunes, and the remaining 40% are from mobile devices.

I was amazed at the number from mobile devices, especially considering I don’t currently have a mobile-friendly version of my shows.  It makes sense, though.  Audio podcasts are best listened to on the go, whether in the car or at the gym, and Smart Phones are a great way to grab such content while out and about.

I’ve concluded that enhancing the mobile experience is my top priority. Here are three action points I will begin to execute and want to share with my fellow audio-podcasters:

1. Create a mobile-friendly site. If the current version of your site is mobile friendly, that’s great. But if you have things like a Flash player and what not, they will not work on devices like the iPhone.
2. Create a ‘download MP3’ link for each show. Most mobile devices can download and play these files just fine. That means all listeners have to do is visit your URL and click on the latest show download link to listen. Get rid of any links or features that don’t work on a mobile device (like Flash players).
3. Make sure the file size of your MP3s doesn’t exceed mobile download limits. Some ISPs, like AT&T, limit downloads on mobile to devices to files sizes less than 20 megabytes each. Make sure your shows are under that limit. If they are longer, split them into multiple files on the mobile version of your site, if possible.

Related Article: Why I Prefer Audio Podcasts

Many are paranoid about privacy, such as how our activity is tracked online.  One of the biggest objections I see is that Web sites and advertising companies will use our personal information in order to display more relevant advertisements to us.

Why are we so scared about that?

Americans, I think, are rightly concerned about “big brother” watching what we do, and many equate corporations watching our behavior and tracking our interests as impeding on our privacy.  But there is a fundamental difference between the real “big brother,” i.e., government, impeding on our privacy and a company supposedly doing so.

When we interact with a company or another person, it is on a voluntary basis.  We chose to go to Whole Foods or Ralphs or visit Google or Facebook.  We do not have such a choice when it comes to the government.  Any corporation, no matter what the size, cannot force us to do anything.  It can’t force us to buy their products, use their services, or visit their Web sites.  Only the government can do this; it can, and does.  For starters, it forces us to pay taxes, get our car smogged, and buy health insurance.

Since government’s proper function is to protect individual rights, when it comes knocking on our door and asking for information that could only be used to violate our rights, clearly fears of “big brother” are justified.

How much money do you make?  What is your ethnicity?  What are your religious beliefs?  Such questions are none of the government’s business, yet when and if required by law, we have to provide such information to the government.  That is not the case with a company.

The purpose of a company is to make money.  It is to offer us value in exchange for money.  It is not to destroy value.  So when an advertising company wants to know our income, our age, our interests, our buying habits, etc., this information is used by the company to potentially provide us with better value in the future.  It uses this information for the purpose of better their product and marketing efforts to reach the right buyers, i.e., the people who want to buy their product the most.  Maybe it’s you.  Maybe it’s not.

The smarter advertising technology, the happier I am.  If I never see an ad for ESPN again in my life, that’s a good thing, because ESPN should know that the only game I like is Badminton.  Yet when Badminton is being played on the Olympics, perhaps NBC could send me an e-mail alert telling me where to go watch it and when.

That’s a good thing for ESPN and for me: They won’t waste their time trying to reach me and I don’t’ have to sort through ESPN spam.  It’s also a good thing for NBC and me: They can target me specifically—someone who actually may be interested in their product—and I probably would have forgotten to even look for it in the first place, but once reminded gone and watched it.

Am I giving up my privacy?  In a small sense, yes, but there is no harm to me and, in fact, only value to be gained.  “Giving up” your privacy is not necessarily a bad thing.  You do it every time you introduce yourself to someone: “Hello, my name is Sean.”  Now you know my name.  You didn’t before.  This allows you to engage with me in some way—or even avoid me in the future if you don’t want to deal with me.

Of course, companies and other people can and do violate rights.  But this is the exception, not the norm.  And such violations should (and generally are) illegal and individuals should be protected against those who do violate their rights by force—which is the proper function of government.

So the next time you’re worried that Best Buy may be watching your behavior as you walk through their store, or a Facebook is tracking how you use their social network, or the supermarket asks you to sign up for a loyalty program, know that in all likelihood, they are doing so for the purpose of improving their product or to better reach or communicate with you about things you actually may want to buy in the future.

Often times we get “junk mail,” whether electronic or via snail mail, and we cry for privacy laws because they are a hassle to sort through and throw away.  But when we get or see content we actually want, we don’t think of it that way.  It just feels like our friends at Bed Bath & Beyond were kind enough to send us another twenty percent off coupon, and we don’t cry about our privacy.

My biggest constraint when using Twitter is the experience hopping from one device to another, such as from the iPhone to the iPad to the Web browser on my Mac laptop or PC desktop. There just isn’t a good way to keep my place each time I read my Twitter feed.

This isn’t a problem if I stick to a single device (I use Twitterriffic), since it keeps the screen on the last tweets I’ve read whenever I load the program. I find myself avoiding looking at Twitter on anything other than my iPhone, because then I have to figure out what the last thing I read was, or scan through a bunch of posts I’ve already read when jumping between devices.

With a “last read” or “bookmark” feature implemented into their API, software developers such as Twitterrific, TweetDeck, etc., could use this to sync the last message read, and thus only display the messages one hasn’t read yet (or mark that point with some visual indicator). Twitter could implement the same feature on their site by visually displaying this mark at the appropriate place and jumping to that point on the screen.

(As a side note, it would be nice to read tweets from oldest to newest on the site as well. I tend to read from the bottom to the top, and that’s a little clunky.)

How would this work? Every time a user downloaded a batch of tweets successfully, Twitter would update the “last read” indicator for that user, so the next time a request for tweets is received (even if from a different device), this information would be passed along to the application and dealt with properly.

This would save everyone valuable time when consuming their tweets across multiple devices.

If Twitter doesn’t implement this in their API, I would switch to any software that did internally. There are versions of Twitterrific and Tweetdeck for iPhone and iPad, so if I had to stay in one ecosystem to achieve this, I would.