Free Newsletter
Netflix cuts jobs, points finger at Silverlight
Netflix is trimming 50 jobs because of Microsoft Silverlight. At least that's what the company claims in a blog post on its website, citing significantly improved streaming video performance on the Silverlight platform as the reason it needs to cut 50 technical customer service positions. Silverlight was the platform for all Netflix streaming, after the company announced Mac compatibility in late October.
The company stated that the layoffs were not indicative of Netflix as a whole, and it maintained that it will continue to hire in other divisions of the company.
The layoffs will be enacted in January after the rush of holiday customer service traffic. The company expressed remorse about the layoffs, but said that Silverlight is simply too good, and the terminated employees simply didn't have enough to do anymore.
While it's interesting to see a tech company blaming something other than the economy for belt tightening and layoffs, it's hard to believe that the overarching bleak 2009 outlook didn't factor into the decision and its timing. Netflix has launched many streaming partnerships in the past few weeks, so unless all of those go completely smoothly, the remaining technical support staff at Netflix may be bombarded as they each take more calls on after the cutbacks.
For more:
- see the blog post on Netflix's site
Related articles
Netflix instant streaming comes to Mac
Netflix: 20 Million Future Streaming Customers, DVD Peaking
Comments
Posted by Comment Guy | December 8, 2008 - 5:38pm
Download video in any form will never compete with streaming video
Download set top boxes and download portable players ( ie Tivo, Blockbuster, Sling box, XBOX 360, Apple TV, VUDU, Hulu, PS3, Boxee, Silverlight, Joost ) are a thing of the past, only to be replaced by the technology used by service providers such as MyTVPAL and Netflix.
Service providers like MyTVPAL offer 1080p instant blu-ray streaming video on demand and live tv over PC Player, set top box, and I think they will have a portable device out soon.
Keep in mind also that P2P is on the way out because it uses to much bandwidth, both up and down, and is unstable. I'm refering to service providers such as VUDU ( a one trick pony ) and Joost, who latest foray into portable video on demand on the itouch / iphone is frezing, buffering, and providing a horrible user experience even on my 6mbps connection.
Streaming video is a great addition for live tv and video on demand, but at the end of the day only those technology companies like Matrixstream will be able to support the best quality over the best effort public internet when doing a triple play ( set top box, PC Player, and portable device ) because currently where Netflix requires 8mbps for 720p streaming, MyTVPAL can support 720p streaming a 3mbps and 1080p blu-ray streaming at 6mbps.
Keep the above in mind when considering the average person today in the United States and Canada has between 1.5 - 3.0Mbps. So While MyTVPAL can service the majority of broadband users today in the United States and Canada in both 720p and 1080p today it will be years before Netflix can service a fraction of the broadband population in high definition instant video streaming.
At the end of the day, service providers such as Netflix and Blockbuster will have evolve to provide a service like MyTVPAL or suffer the consequences of not providing low bandwidth, instant playing, 1080p blu-ray high definition platform that we?ve come to expect from MyTVPAL on PC Player, set top box, and soon I would imagine, portable player.
Comment Guy
Comments (1) | Post a comment