No longer will Netflix freak out over the combination of one person’s love for tearful documentaries, another’s preference for old westerns, and a third’s occasional indulgence of campy sci-fi, and assume the user wants a tearful space-based western from 1967: Each shared Netflix account can now have up to five individual user profiles for free.
Maybe it says something about me that the most exciting thing in my week is getting tailor-made recommendations to improve my television-watching experience, but since an announcement was made mid-June, I have been eagerly awaiting the absence of subtitled crime dramas and heartwarming romantic movies featuring a strong female lead cluttering up the homepage.
While the new service is being started today, the profiles will be coming to all accounts over the next several weeks, depending on location and the type of device being used, with Android and Nintendo Wii being among those not yet ready for device support.
Back when Netflix was just a mail-order DVD service it had individual profiles for shared accounts, but these were used so infrequently that they were discontinued. All preferences in the updated version are individual, both in settings and content, and can link to separate Facebook accounts — though I’ve never understood the desire to broadcast late-night binge-watching to your entire social network.
Netflix has put together a short video explaining this service, so feel free to watch an awkward employee over-articulate his emotionless description of user profiles and explain what Teen Wolf is below.
(via Engadget)
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