Netflix announced a new pricing plan today that separates the unlimited DVDs-by-mail and instant streaming subscription (which currently costs $9.99 together) into two separate plans at $7.99 each, effectively raising the rates by $5.99 for subscribers who still want both options. In making the change, Netflix is organizationally splitting into two units as well — one for DVDs (which is still a vibrant business) and another for its quickly-growing streaming product.
As you might imagine, the change was met with outage — around 10,000 comments on Netflix’s blog so far — not to mention the hoopla on Twitter. “How would you like to be the community/social media manager for @Netflix today? No thanks,” tweeted @benjamingaines.
But many Netflix fans are sticking up for the company. “Kinda crazy how much people are whining about spending $6 more,” tweets @fromedome. “Not to sound like your grandpa, but Netflix used to cost $20/month with no streaming. It was still an incredible value.”
So will people really flee Netflix? And with its $7.99 premium service, will Hulu pick up new subscribers? Mashwork studied just over 10,000 tweets about Netflix and Hulu prior to today’s announcement, and it breaks down the numbers in this infographic:
Over on Mashable, an unscientific poll found that 29% said they’ll cancel their Netflix service altogether, and 39% said they’d only subscribe to the streaming plan and dump the DVDs. Taken together, this means Hulu could get a good bump from the Netflix change, but saying that you’ll change is different than actually doing it. What do you think?