About 2 weeks ago, Netflix announced they were getting rid of user profiles. They said the reason was to make the site more simple to use for everyone and they observed :

Too many members found the feature difficult to understand and cumbersome

I had my account set up with 2 profiles for a while so that the boyfriend can have his own queue. But we eventually got rid of the 2 profiles and just let him move the movies up and down my queue. I think the reason they said was probably true. The feature was not very usable. But I don’t think you could get rid of a feature many users are actively using just because some users found it difficult to understand. There must be something that Netflix wasn’t being honest about.  If it was really the difficulty to use, shouldn’t it be the responsibility of the service to make the feature more usable, more understandable, less cumbersome? Getting rid of a feature people find it hard to use can’t be the right way to go about!

So people complained loudly and Netflix listened and they are keeping the feature. Here is the email I got just now.

Now, I believe it’s on the shoulders of the designers at Netflix to figure out how to make this feature not so hard to use.