Netflix relents, "Profiles" here to stay

A little more than a week after Netflix announced it would nix separate account queues, the movies-by-mail giant has—wisely, if you ask me—spared its "Profiles" feature the ax.

An e-mail popped into my inbox last night, and it reads:

You spoke, and we listened. We are keeping Profiles. Thank you for all the calls and e-mails telling us how important Profiles are.

We are sorry for any inconvenience we have caused. We hope the next time you hear from us we will delight, and not disappoint, you.

It's great news, as the Profiles feature—which lets you set up multiple DVD queues under a single account—is a clever and (as I wrote before) potentially relationship-saving option, especially for domicile-sharing movie lovers with clashing tastes.

A Netflix rep had originally told me that Profiles were going away because they were "not used by a very big portion of the member base."

Well, I'm glad that Netflix has decided to reverse course and keep a cool feature even if it's not that popular—although, as the same Netflix spokesperson pointed out, the Profile feature was pretty popular with everyone who used it.

Also, I must say—I appreciate Netflix's use of the words "we," "are," and "sorry" in the same sentence. Few companies are comfortable with even admitting that they were wrong, much less apologizing for it.

In any case, apology accepted.