Netflix will finally allow customers to set multiple user profiles on a single account, a feature expected to roll out by the end of the summer.
Setting multiple user profiles on a single account will make it easier to share without compromising your own Netflix experience. Netflix currently offers its subscribers very accurate suggestions and categories based on what they recently watched. It all sounds very good, but in some cases it's less desirable.
Let's take, for instance, a Netflix account shared with the whole family. The man of the house may like to watch rough sports, violent action movies or the occasional horror late at night. The wife may enjoy spending her evenings watching a sappy romance or some great love story. The kids eat their breakfast cereal in front of the TV, watching cartoons or some kids' movies. Netflix takes all these preferences into account and offers suggestions accordingly, but you wouldn't want your kids to stumble upon a horror movie suggestion and wet their beds for the next month. Enter multiple user profiles.
With multiple user profiles, each member of the family has their own list of suggestions, based on their preferences and recent use. Everyone in the household will be able to log into their own user profile before launching the Netflix interface. More specifically, logging into the household Netflix account will first display all user profiles, with a name and avatar assigned to each profile. Once the user selects their own profile, the Netflix interface will load with all recommendations and star ratings according to that specific profile.
According to Yahoo! News, Netflix is targeting a late summer launch. The new feature is reportedly in testing for now, but should roll out by the end of August. The service will allow five or six different users to store their preferences on a single account.
Netflix may also decide to include some parental control settings tied into user profiles, which would be preferable. Parental controls would allow parents to limit their kids' profiles to content suitable for children and restrict access to their own profile, just in case the kids might want to watch an R-rated movie on daddy's profile. Netflix already has a parental control setting in the current Netflix Instant interface, but this setting limits the entire account rather than a specific member of the family. Password protection on user profiles would be indicated, but it could be tricky on a platform that lacks a physical keyboard.
Netflix VP of Product Innovation Todd Yellin told Yahoo News that the company is still working out the fundamentals, but the service should allow for five or six different profiles on a single account. Only two of those profiles would be able to actively stream content at any given time.
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