People have been sharing Netflix accounts with their friends and family for ages, now, but that caused a series of inconveniences that Netflix is going to fix in its next update.
This must be their way of saying “We know you’ve been sharing your accounts and we’re willing to help you do that in a better way.” The problem with sharing the account with someone else was that the recent history and the recommendations were no longer personalized. The more people were involved, the greater the mess. In an attempt to make this better, Netflix plans to implement multiple profiles per subscription, so that each user has the recommendations tailored to his needs and tastes.
Tom Yellin, the Netflix VP of Product Innovation, demoed in an interview for Yahoo News how this is going to be implemented. On an iPad, he revealed a prototype start screen that featured icons for each of the profiles. Since it was a prototype, some things could change by the time this update gets public. Still, the concept will remain unchanged. The same way people use multiple accounts on their personal computers, while owning a single operating system license, they will be able to use multiple profiles with their Netflix accounts, too. The company has to decide whether the maximum number of profiles per subscription is five or six, but either way, this is more than enough for most families.
Users hope that each Netflix profile will have separate parental controls. Moreover, some suggest that it’d be nice to have the ability of password protecting each of the profiles. Another option would be to make an iOS/Android app specifically for kids, if parental controls are not implemented for each profile. Netflix has a “Family plan” in the works, so separating the content depending on the age of each user is a must.
On top of that, users would appreciate if programs could be removed from the “Recently watched” list because of two reasons. First of all, their curiosity might push them to make unwise choices regarding the programs, and such choices shouldn’t be permanently reflected in their profile, especially if they watched the program only for a brief period of time. Secondly, receiving recommendations based on those unwise choices would be unwanted. Netflix loves getting feedback from its users, so if this update won’t include the suggested features, a future one most certainly will.
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