Internet, Streaming Service | featured news

Netflix says it will stream certain movies from The Weinstein Co., including "The Artist," under an exclusive licensing agreement.

Netflix Inc won back Wall Street's affections on Thursday after adding more U.S. subscribers than expected in the fourth quarter, a rebound that prompted analyst upgrades and the company's biggest one-day stock jump in two years. The Los Gatos, California-based company's shares soared 23.5 percent to $117.40 in afternoon trading. Shares had dropped to a year's low of $62.37 on November 30.

Netflix’s stock rose by about 10% last week before falling lower, driven by rumors about potential acquisition by Verizon. While reports indicated that Verizon may be seriously considering the acquisition at around $4.6 billion, the company denied that it has organized any talks or meetings with Netflix. We think that Netflix will not sell itself at the implied price per share that results from $4.6 billion bid. For details see Verizon Would Have a Tough Time Acquiring Netflix which talks about why an acquisition at stated value is unlikely, be it by Verizon or another potential suitor Amazon. In general, several analysts including Trefis analysts see any acquisition as highly unlikely.

Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter says that increased content costs, a precipitous decline in subscribers, and a 'growth at all cost' mentality will continue to hurt Netflix in the future. Read this blog post by Don Reisinger on The Digital Home.

The online music service is allowing third parties to write add-on apps adding functionality to its music player.

Despite recent troubles, Netflix is a major force on the Internet, accounting for 32.7% of peak U.S. downstream traffic, according to a new report.

Amazon expanded a licensing agreement that allows Prime members to stream additional PBS programming.

The news is surprising because for a long while now this has been a lousy economic climate to do any initial public offering.

After months of being courted by technology giants and TV signal providers, online video service Hulu is no longer for sale, its media company owners said Thursday. The Walt Disney Co., News Corp., Comcast Corp. and Providence Equity Partners had been shopping the site since June after receiving an unsolicited takeover offer.

Netflix is abandoning its widely panned decision to separate its DVD-by-mail and Internet streaming services because it would make them more difficult to use.