By
Rick Aristotle Munarriz
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October 15, 2011
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You know that CEO Reed Hastings is in trouble when he's lampooned in a Saturday Night Live skit.
Sensing that there was no way that Qwikster could ever recover -- and that subscribers didn't want to be sent to two different sites for their DVDs and streams -- Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX ) decided to kill Qwikster.
The stock initially rose on Monday's news but closed lower on the day. It also appears that the video-game rentals that were promised through Qwikster aren't likely to materialize now.
This is still the right move for Netflix. Hastings is usually ahead of his time, but this time he simply went too far at a time when his company was clearly vulnerable. Folks will brand him a flip-flopper now, but they'll thank him in the end for having the nimbleness and the self-awareness to undo a terrible decision before it was actually implemented.
Briefly in the news
And now let's take a quick look at some of the other stories that shaped our week.
- Sony's (NYSE: SNE ) online networks have been hacked again. This appears to be on a much smaller scale than before, but it's not easy being a wired PS3 gamer these days.
- Are we partying like it's 2010? Reports claim that Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO ) and AOL (NYSE: AOL ) may be hooking up, though for now the interest is coming primarily from AOL CEO Tim Armstrong. It'll take two to tango. And cash.
- SINA (Nasdaq: SINA ) popped 18% higher on Thursday, after a government official had kind words to say about its popular Weibo microblog site. Despite what is likely to be tighter government control over the medium, it's a better resolution for SINA than shutting down the chatty site entirely.
Until next week, I remain,
Rick Munarriz
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