As reported on TechCrunch.
by CATHERINE SHU
It’s a nuisance many Netflix users are familiar with–you log-on to watch something from the Criterion Collection, only to find that your recommendations are now littered with “Dora The Explorer” or “Say Yes To The Dress” because someone in your household with less erudite tastes in streaming entertainment used your account. Fortunately, Netflix Vice President of Product Innovation Todd Yellinconfirmed at E3 that Netflix will launch separate profiles for people sharing one account this summer, giving each person customized recommendations.
In addition to making Netflix recommendations more useful for individual viewers, multiple profiles will also allow the company to take a closer look at user data. Without multiple user profiles, the mish-mash of information generated by accounts with several users amounted to “junk data,” but multiple profiles will allow Netflix to hone its recommendations and make better of it social-sharing features, which in turn will increase viewing hours and lure in new subscribers.
The company, which first unveiled its plans for personalized Netflix user profiles at CES in January,needs to keep users interested in content in order to convince them to continue their subscriptions. Multiple user profiles allows the company to not only offer more refined suggestions to individual viewers, but also allows users to broadcast better recommendations to their friends on Facebook, a feature Netflix spent a year hurdling legal blocks to get.