Netflix App Lets You Suggest Shows to Facebook Friends

So you just finished watching a TV show or movie on Netflix and absolutely loved it. Now you need to tell your friends about it. Netflix has introduced a new feature on its iOS app for iPhone and iPad that lets you recommend a TV show or movie to a Facebook friend privately.

Yes, you heard that correctly: Privately.

If you want to recommend a TV show or movie that you watched on Netflix to a Facebook friend (or multiple Facebook friends), you can send them the recommendation via a Facebook message, or if they also have Facebook connected to their Netflix account, your recommendation will show up right on their Netflix page when they’re browsing it.

It’s an interesting new feature that doesn’t spam all your Facebook friends at once, which seems to be the goal of pretty much every other app nowadays. However, Netflix wants to keep things between you and your close friends, and even the app says it won’t post things on your News Feed for everyone to see.

The feature is also available on Netflix’s web interace, PS3, Xbox, and many set-top boxes and smart TVs. Support for this feature will be coming to more devices in the near future.

Netflix seems to be one of the few apps and services that understands that spamming your Facebook friends is really annoying, so this is one step closer to a world where we’re not driving our friends crazy with all sorts of dumb requests that are irrelevant to a majority of your friends.

A feature like this makes the recent price hike of Netflix worth it. If you don’t remember, Netflix raised the price of its streaming service from $7.99 to $8.99 earlier this year. Current subscribers get to keep the $7.99 pricing for two years.

This means that Netflix is just a tad more expensive than Hulu Plus (unless Hulu Plus follows suit eventually), but Netflix subscribers luckily aren’t bombarded with ads like Hulu Plus, which is one of the biggest downsides of the green-themed streaming service.

Netflix says that the price increase will allow the company to “acquire more content and deliver an even better streaming experience,” and that’s certainly the truth.

The streaming service has been branching out as of late and is more than just a streaming service now. It’s a full-blown production studio and has released multiple seasons of its original series political thriller House of Cards, as well as a couple of other original shows like Orange Is the New Black and Hemlock Grove.

Producing these shows cost money, and so does signing contracts that allow Netflix the rights to stream other TV shows and movies. Netflix passes some of this cost to the users, who pay the $7.99 per month to stream these shows and movies to their TVs and mobile devices.

While a price hike is never good news for consumers to hear, it will hopefully bring better and more content to subscribers, which will eventually justify the price increase, we hope. Of course, current members will have the current price locked in for a while, which is good news.

Furthermore, if you’ve been thinking about canceling your cable subscription, there’s no better time than right now. Netflix offers a huge range of TV shows, and with that mixed with other streaming services, you’re on your way to having on-demand access to just about any TV show and movie imaginable.

Of course, we wish Netflix would fix its awful Apple TV app, but sooner or later it’ll have to get better. In the meantime, we’re waiting for a new Apple TV streaming box anyway.