As most of you know, I’m a diehard Netflix fan. Besides a really simple and cheap method for watching movies, some of the really addictive aspects of Netflix include the ratings and friends features where you can rate movies and see what your friends thought. I really enjoy the “most similarity” rating, which shows which friends have the most similar taste in movies. While the rating could become self-prophesying, it definitely provides a good means for deciding what to watch in some situations.

Over the past couple of months a couple of friends have mentioned the new service that Blockbuster is providing, which is effectively trying to put Netflix on the dead company list. In addition, I’ve noticed that the Netflix turnaround on movies over the past 6 months has fallen off significantly. Since there is a shipping hub in Austin, I would typically get 2 day turnaround on a returned movie, but now, this time has increased to 4-5 days, which has left me dry on more than one occasion. Is this competition with Blockbuster starting to have an effect on Netflix? Has anyone else noticed the Netflix slowdown? I would think Netflix would want to do all it can to fend off its market share from Blockbuster; thus, saving a few dollars by slowing the movie return process seems like a bad trade off.

On a completely different note, why hasn’t Netflix integrated with Rotten Tomatoes? Before investing 2 hours of your life on a movie, it pays to do a little research, and Rotten Tomatoes includes excellent overall ratings from a large number of critics as well as users. Netflix has some critics involved with the online system, but having the power of aggregation of all critics would be a much added bonus.