What's Qwikster? Big Changes Coming at Netflix

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings made a direct announcement via email to customers on Monday morning about some of the recent changes the company has made, and some of the upcoming changes which are to come. The announcement began as an apology for the way the recent separation of DVD rental and streaming occurred, and then went on to make another major announcement, the new Qwikster service.

So what is Qwikster? Qwikster is the new name for Netflix's DVD rental service. It will be accessed at Qwikster.com, and if you visit that website now, you'll get a message that it's "Launching soon, so start popping the popcorn". It's also called "Qwikster: A Netflix Company."

The familiar Netflix DVD queue and other features will be the same, it will just be based on that new website. DVDs sent in Netflix's recognizable red envelopes will have the new Qwikster logo, and credit card statements for the DVD rental service will say Qwikster as well.

An additional feature of the new Qwikster.com will be a video game rental service which can be added to accounts with a similar upgrade to how Blu-rays were made available. Netflix game rental has long been a topic of interest, and this is a major shift for the company to now include that capability.

Netflix will now only refer to the company's streaming services, so Qwikster and Netflix will operate as two wholly independent companies. Hastings said that, "Streaming and DVD by mail are really becoming two different businesses, with very different cost structures, that need to be marketed differently, and we need to let each grow and operate independently."

So why "Qwikster"? According to Hastings, "We chose the name Qwikster because it refers to quick delivery. We will keep the name 'Netflix' for streaming."

Personally, the name Qwikster seems gimmicky and a forced fit with similar sounding web 2.0 and social networking companies over the years - Twitter, Flickr, Friendster, Napster, etc .

Further, the switch seems like a bold gamble, with Netflix banking heavily on streaming and allowing the DVD rental service which made the company to either survive and thrive as Qwikster or fall to the wayside on its own. As a customer who has used both Netflix services in the past, their DVD rental is currently the superior service by far, and moving away from that seems questionable.