The econalypse has done great things for Netflix, sending recession-addled customers running to embrace its way-cheaper-than-cable DVD-by-mail and streaming-movie service. The online DVD-rental pioneer posted earnings that beat Wall Street estimates and announced that its subscriber base has grown to 10.6 million.
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Repudiating claims that Blockbuster intended to file for bankruptcy earlier this month, spokesperson Karen Raskopf said the troubled video rental chain has “lots of plans to grow our business.” If inking a video-on-demand deal with a declining DVR pioneer is one of them… well, that’s not much of a plan, is it?
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Netflix’s March 2008 outage is back, this time in wide theatrical release. A serious disruption to the company’s distribution systems has prevented it from mailing DVDs to many of its customers for the better part of this week. “Our engineers continue to work around the clock to restore normal operations,” Netflix said in a post [...]
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Blockbuster CEO Jim Keyes says acquiring Circuit City will be “a challenge,” and while the company is up for one, a challenge of this particular sort may be more than it can handle. Because a week after announcing its $1.3 billion gambit for the foundering–yes, foundering–electronics chain, Blockbuster (BBI) says it would rather drop it [...]
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The controversy over Facebook’s Beacon advertising system may have been laid to rest last December, but its memory lingers on.
Today brings news of the first lawsuit over the service and, oddly enough, it wasn’t filed against Facebook. It was filed against Blockbuster. Facebook member Cathryn Elaine Harris is suing the video chain Blockbuster (BBI) for [...]
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Wow. Blockbuster is completely out of ideas, isn’t it? This morning the foundering movie rental chain went public with its bid to acquire ailing retail consumer-electronics chain Circuit City.
In a Feb. 17 letter to Circuit City CEO Philip Schoonover, Blockbuster (BBI) offered to pay more than $1 billion for the chain. But, to date, Circuit [...]
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Promises, promises, promises … When Apple debuted iTunes Movie Rentals this past January, the company pledged to offer “over 1,000 titles by the end of February, including over 100 titles in stunning high-definition video with 5.1 Dolby Digital surround sound.” Well, today’s March 4 and, as best I can tell, Apple hasn’t kept its promise.
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