Netflix Dumps Profiles, Forces Me To Watch Boyfriend's Dumb Romantic Comedies

Yesterday Netflix announced through its community blog that it will be terminating its profile feature as of September 1, removing the ability to split a Netflix account with a roommate or family member - and the luxury of keeping separate movie queues:

Please know that the motivation is solely driven by keeping our service as simple and as easy to use as possible. Too many members found the feature difficult to understand and cumbersome, having to consistently log in and out of the website.

Continuing to maintain the profiles feature for the passionate few who use it (including myself) distracts us from the mission of presenting to all our members the easiest way to find the best titles for them from the 100k plus on DVD and the 10k plus available instantly.

We will do our best to find better ways for families to share accounts than the existing profiles feature and will continue to invest in improving the website experience in many different ways.

As long as users who currently enjoy the profile feature remain tied into a single account, this means that they'll now receive each other's recommendations as well, which is sure to engender further grumbling. Whether those users will spring for additional accounts remains to be seen, but it does seem unlikely.

And while Netflix does promise to find a better way to share accounts, the fact that they're not even grandfathering in existing users who take advantage of profiles doesn't promise a lot in the way of flexibility.