This post is a great add-on to my earlier post on how only Community can save Netflix given Blockbuster’s increasingly aggressive poaching behavior.

It’s always nice to stumble across fellow bloggers who’ve had similar experiences. Here’s Rohit from Influential Interactive Marketing:

Ultimately, the thing that is keeping customers loyal for Netflix won’t be the interface or even the innovations – but the very vocal customer evangelists they have. When I am a Netflix customer, I feel like part of a community.

Rohit goes on to cite examples of Netflix’s community responding to Blockbuster’s tactics with their:

…customer experience videos on YouTube proclaiming Netflix far superior to Blockbuster, the Hacking Netflix blog dedicated to all things Netflix and glowing reviews about their new download service.

My reasons for staying with Netflix are similar to Rohit’s:

(a) the strength of Netflix’s international/indie cinema DVD offerings

(b) community?

However, as much as Netflix’s community of users rally around Netflix, I have to say, the service still lacks certain basic features of community that newer movie sites like Flixster have.

Ignoring the fact that Flixster’s target audience is the Myspace crowd, I’ve been surprised by the tons of community features it has compared to Netflix. They’ve even improved upon basic Netflix features such as their ratings/reviews.

Also, I don’t hit the roadblock of being forced to chat only with my friends who are Netflix subscribers. I’ve added 6 friends on Netflix (collected over the past 2 years), while I have 18 of my friends join MyFlixster (in less than 2 weeks).

Here’s an idea: Netflix should give their users the option of adding friends to “MyNetflix” (EVEN if they’re non-subscribers) to experience enhanced community features (similar to Flixster), and it’d be a great opportunity for Netflix to impress my friends by offering a vastly superior online community experience vis-a-vis Blockbuster’s price incentives.

Until that happens, wanna join my Flixster?