1) They should have done it from the beginning, in place of the price increase. The price increase is what primed the negative reaction in the first place. To give a price hike, and then to screw over the users that stuck around through that hike was a little near-sighted. And yes, users were screwed over – usability would change greatly; where you could once manage your DVD queue and instant viewing in the same place (and where an often use case is to queue a DVD when streaming is unavailable) you would now need to log into a separate site, and also hope your title was available in this separate database. Which leads to:

2) Disregarding the customers’ concerns: trying to phrase the price hike and split as anything other than positive was just a bad idea. Especially in the case of the split, they should have just called it what it was – the need to split a business that is going to grow from one that is going to die out. Pretending things would now be awesome for all parties involved was disingenuous and the public caught onto that instantly.

3) Qwikster is a terrible, terrible name.

4) A blog post is *not* the place to announce these things. A letter would have been nice.

5) Especially considering the reaction from the price hike, they should have really padded the blow that was the Qwikster split – lower price or a month free or *something*.

6) Pulling back Qwikster was just as bad of a decision, though. Relenting just makes them look even weaker; I suspect the announcement of going into some European markets is a last ditch effort to show confidence right before they release Q3 earnings. Frankly, I think it’s going to be a bloodbath.