By MICAH CHOQUETTE Scene Writer on Mar 14, 2013, at 9:00 AM Updated on 3/14 at 1:00 PM
PRAIRIE NERDS
'Look, up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's...'
You know the rest. Superman is as much an American ...
There's this term floating around a lot in the mobile design industry right now. 'Skeumorphism' refers to a design principle ...
Netflix just released an update today for their iOS app that's not all that surprising, but still welcomed. Here's the update ...
I've long wondered why Netflix didn't take advantage of social media sharing options in order to generate more buzz on certain movies or just give its users the ability to share what they've been watching recently. I didn't realize until today that it was because that had been illegal.
A bit of history: In the 1980s, a Supreme Court nominee had his rental history leaked and published in the Washington City Paper. Despite that his rental history was uncontroversial and had little to do with the Senate voting against his confirmation, he still managed to push through a bill that became known as the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), which was signed into law in 1988 by President Ronald Reagan. Even though Netflix hadn't been formed yet, the law applied to "similar audio and visual technologies," which of course, included the Internet's darling movie-rental service.
Thankfully, that law was amended by President Obama last December, and Netflix officially pushed features that had previously been available to the U.S. over the course of the next two months.
The intentions are good, but the concept is flawed. You can connect your Facebook and Netflix accounts to see what your Friends have shared or rated highly, but all of this activity is only seen on the Netflix homepage or app, and not in the Facebook News Feed. Annoying, but better than nothing. The video below does a better job of explaining it.
Mildly related: Facebook just announced a new News Feed redesign last week. Have you gotten your early access yet? Be looking for it, soon.
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