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Prime video is not ready to compete Netflix Forget his previously benevolent attitude towards password release.
Response to a blissful Netflix tweet from 2017 (“Love shares a password”), UK Twitter Prime Video’s grip delivered a jab embedded in a graphic. (See the exchange below.)
In a recreation of the Netflix home screen, which displays all user profiles associated with an account, the Prime Video account provided a mocking response to the question “Who’s watching?” It replied, “Anyone who has our password,” underscoring it with a heart emoji. The tweet has garnered more than half a million likes since it was posted on Thursday.
Netflix, citing internal investigations that found up to 100 households have shared passwords, is in the process of rolling out a new policy that will charge those who share login credentials. The procedure, which the company describes with the less threatening-sounding term “paid sharing”, reached the US this week after coming into force in Canada, New Zealand, Portugal and Spain. Subscribers to the company’s $15.49 plan (the most popular plan) must pay an additional $7.99 if everyone shares the subscriber’s password.
Efforts to curb sharing coincided with Netflix’s introduction of a cheaper, ad-supported subscription tier last fall. Wall Street analysts say the two initiatives together could generate billions of dollars in additional revenue in the coming years. This influx is seen as crucial as the company copes with subscriber saturation in some areas and increased competition in some areas streaming field that once had it practically all to itself.
Netflix’s more recent competitors have generally not attempted to limit password sharing, concluding (like Netflix before it) that achieving scale is their primary goal and recovering lost revenue can come later. For its part, Prime Video is tied to the much broader Prime subscription, which offers free shipping and other perks, and Amazon has traditionally been more flexible when it comes to adding adults to a household’s Prime account.
While conflicts between brands on social media, especially in the tech world, are nothing new, Prime Video’s caustic tone contrasts with the magnanimous Tweet 2021 by Jeff Bezos on Netflix’s “impressive and inspiring” success Squid Game.
Here’s Prime Video UK’s tweet: