British Netflix users could add family and friends to their account with individual viewing and recommendation profiles.
The multi-user profiles are being tested at Netflix’s headquarters in San Francisco ahead of a US launch, with the UK second in line to benefit.
Todd Yellin, vice president of product innovation at Netflix, told Digital Spy that the feature has long been one of the top requests from customers.
Read Recombu Digital’s guide to NetflixHe said: “What we have heard for a long time, from a product side, is that, ‘sure, you are personalising what I want, but it is actually what my household wants. You are treating us like one being’.”
“The problem is that if you want to make something frictionless and brain dead, but also give more features, there has to be a balance and you don’t want feature creep and complexity.”
Instead of getting Peppa Pig mixed in with their House of Cards, a very small number of Netflix’s 33 million members are currently able to have individual logins for different members of their households, who see personalised top 10s and recommendations.
As the video streaming service’s second-largest market, with more than a million subscribers, the UK could get the feature by the end of this year if the US launch goes well.
It’s a smart idea for customers watching on a PC or tablet, but controversial for smart TV, with Virgin this week deciding not to link its YouTube app for TiVo to individual user IDs because it’s a shared experience.
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