I think all the Sturm and Tang™ of how many subscribers Netflix will lose with the crackdown on account sharing is very overblown and not cause for concern, and here's why (and please bear with my sarcasm here, the irony so thick on this issue for me I doubt I could cut it with a Texas Chainsaw):
1. Those who benefited most from Netflix account sharing because they say they can't afford to pay for it are people who wouldn't pay for it anyway at any price, so it's a push overall, to use a gambling term.
2. The bad publicity Netflix will receive in the press from the loudest Tweeters is just that, very shrill noise. When you take a something of value away from people who used to get it for free, there will be a lot of squawking. They are griping publicly about their own theft of a service they should rightly be paying to use, so... how is that Netflix's problem? It seems foolish to me anyone would even do that, but as we know, people aren't always the smartest about what they reveal to the world on social media.
3. Netflix seems to be bending over backwards to make paying additional money very easy for those former, uh, borrowers of Netflix's streaming service content. They bent kinda like some victims did on that weird Squid Game series from South Korea. Frankly I couldn't figure that one out at all since it was subtitled and I'm a slow reader. Anway, for people who still want to watch content Netflix content while also cleansing their souls, I think it's a good deal. That's great PR for Neflix in my little black book, so that is a net positive.
4. Netflx finally made the very wise decision to no longer report subscriber numbers at all in the future, a change they probably should have made years ago. That will force Mr. Market to focus on the traditional measures of a company's value, things like revenues, profits and something called EBITDA. No idea what that stands for, but my ideas are.. uh....what was I saying? Oh yeah... somehow investors moved away from valuing companies based on that information and focused on market share instead. Why? You'd have to ask Mr. Market, I surely don't know!
5. A very successful company named Apple made still only has about 10% worldwide market share for personal computers, yet they've now got a vast array of other products that bring in over $70B in revenues in a down quarter. I'm sure even Elon Musk looks up from his Twitter app to cast some stink eye at those numbers when they're released four times a year. Apple made the same decision a few years ago about reporting unit sales numbers for their products, and it hasn't seemed to cook Tim Apple's books much. I made a lot of noise about that change myself, but my inherent shyness and apathy about social media confined those comments to this website.
6. Netflix has rolled out the testing of their lower priced ad-tier much sooner than they originally said I believe, and undercut their major competitors in the process on pricing. Sometimes surprises are a good thing (unless they're surprise parties and it's my birthday) and it seems Mr. Market likes wearing that that goofy party hat anyway. Why? Who knows! I find the look a bit embarrassing myself, but Mr. Market works in mysteries ways sometimes and can be hard to figure out.
7. Last but not least, I think Netlfix's decisions will push NFLX to new highs within a year because the rubberband on the party has been pulled wayyyy back at this point, and the snapback will be forceful. It won't be painful to Mr. Market either because he's also a masochist when he wants to be. Why? See exhibit #6 directly above, your honor.
Unrelated, but has anyone seen the Macalope around lately? He's not shy at all, but darned if I can find him sometimes. My eyesight isn't that good though and I'm also colorblind. He kinda blends into the background of his bank vault covered in Apple-branded $100 Bill Wallpaper™, or so I'm told. |
