What the who what‽ In a Sunday blog post, the CEO of Netflix has announced and confirmed that the streaming and DVD services from Netflix will forever hence be split into two entities. The streaming will continue to be called “Netflix,” while DVDs by mail will be sent from a new place called Qwikster. Yep, because when my mom wants to get a DVD online, having her learn the name of a new service and website is exactly what Netflix needs right now to build confidence among the masses.

You can click this link and read the whole shebang, but what you will want to know is from this quote:

Qwikster will be the same website and DVD service that everyone is used to. It is just a new name, and DVD members will go to qwikster.com to access their DVD queues and choose movies. One improvement we will make at launch is to add a video games upgrade option, similar to our upgrade option for Blu-ray, for those who want to rent Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360 games. Members have been asking for video games for many years, and now that DVD by mail has its own team, we are finally getting it done. Other improvements will follow. Another advantage of separate websites is simplicity for our members. Each website will be focused on just one thing (DVDs or streaming) and will be even easier to use. A negative of the renaming and separation is that the Qwikster.com and Netflix.com websites will not be integrated. So if you subscribe to both services, and if you need to change your credit card or email address, you would need to do it in two places. Similarly, if you rate or review a movie on Qwikster, it doesn’t show up on Netflix, and vice-versa.

The thing that sticks out for me is the word “simplicity.” I could be wrong, but I don’t know of a single person who has ever said, “I don’t understand this ability to look up a film and have the option to stream it or, failing that, put it in my queue. Can someone make this easier for me by splitting these options and making me sign up at another website? Oh yeah, and please don’t have these sites talk to each other in any way so I have to rate films on both sites separately. Thanks.”

One potential positive might be with the added video games, of which they will be going straight up against Gamefly. If they can make this option worthwhile, then this split might just be a benefit to us nerds, but we will have to see.

The news here is, of course, very early on and things may change as we learn more, but right now it just sounds awful for the consumer. It makes me, for one, far less interested in DVDs by mail. If this was the end result in the price-change-heard-round-the-world, then they should have done them both at the same time. Now they just sound like they are grasping for any idea that might stick. Plus that name is just terrible.