Is Reed Hastings CEO of Netflix ($NFLX) using PRISM?

Back in December 2010, Alon Kutai penned a very interesting article on Reed Hastings of Netflix ($NFLX) on the ProActive Newsroom in reference to a short position on NFLX by Whitney Tilson, who is a very well-known and highly regarded professional value investor. "Stop the Presses - Netflix CEO Reed Hastings post on Seeking Alpha" was about Whitney, the Founder and Managing Partner of T2 Partners LLC and his well-articulated and cogent bearish thesis in his article, entitled, “Why We’re Short Netflix.” Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, responded to Tilson’s December 16^th article on Seeking Alpha. As one would expect, each side of “point/counter-point” exchange drew its share of supporters.

Now Ezra Marbach is singing the praises of Hastings on his Blog in an article titled, "Will Netflix CEO Hastings usher in a new era for online finance, investor relations & social media?":

Over the years, Netflix has experienced intense scrutiny especially as its stock price has appreciated. In response, CEO Hastings has been the model of transparency and accessibility. He regularly updates a PowerPoint presentation detailing Netflix’s strategy and future challenges and pens a lengthy shareholder letter after each and every earnings announcement. Hastings also broke with tradition and opened his quarterly earnings calls to all investor questions regardless of their source. Questions are submitted via email and earnings calls are Q&A-only in order to provide for more interaction with the sell-side, buy-side and retail investor communities.

In an even more dramatic move, Hastings went on the offensive recently in response to a critical presentation by a prominent value investor short Netflix. Instead of following the Patrick Byrne playbook of disparaging short sellers, Hastings responded respectfully and diplomatically by submitting a persuasive blog post to an investor site. He also conducted a lengthy and incredibly informative interview with former Merrill analyst Henry Blodget at Business Insider. Hastings was rewarded for his efforts as reflected in his stock’s subsequent move higher.
Like any CEO, Hastings values his time. He chose to target large online networks of engaged investors to deliver his message. And it worked. So why aren’t other CEOs following a similar playbook, especially small-cap CEOs who are typically starved for attention? Clearly Hastings’ methods aren’t rocket science.

The simple answer? Except for StockTwits and Motley Fool, the current group of financial content websites (i.e. TheStreet, SeekingAlpha, Minyanville, Benzinga, etc.) has done little to pursue public companies and their pent-up desire for a social media presence to complement their IR websites. Instead, massive amounts of valuable investor content sits largely undisturbed on predominantly little trafficked IR websites. Furthermore, CEOs like Netflix’s Hastings who have loads of strategic and actionable investor information to communicate (within the parameters of RegFD) have yet to be unleashed online.

Netflix Business Opportunity

View more presentations from Reed Hastings

I try not to plug ProActive here on this blog, but our PRISM product is doing exactly what Reed Hastings of Netflix is doing.

No experts, but there is plenty of use for it.....

Why I Will Never, Ever Hire A "Social Media Expert"

This is a very interesting article the week after the LinkedIn IPO. Here, Peter Shankman @ the Business Insider states:

Being an expert in social media is like being an expert at taking the bread out of the refrigerator. You might be the best bread-taker-outer in the world, but you know what? The goal is to make an amazing sandwich, and you can’t do that if all you’ve done in your life is taken the bread out of the fridge.

Social media is just another facet of marketing and customer service. Say it with me. Repeat it until you know it by heart. Bind it as a sign upon your hands and upon thy gates. Social media, by itself, will not help you.

I agree with that last sentence. Having spend time at a speech technology start-up (okay I was the co-founder) in Silicon Valley, the last few weeks/months reminds me of that glorious pre-9/11 time period. However, LinkedIn HAS a business model so I really disagree with this statement:

We’re making the same mistakes that we made during the DotCom era, where everyone thought that just adding the term .com to your corporate logo made you instantly credible. It didn’t. If that’s all you did, you emphasized even more strongly how pathetic your company was. You weren’t “building a new paradigm while shifting alternate ways of focusing customers on the clicks and mortar of an organizational exchange.” No -- you were simply an idiot who’d be out of business in six months.

Well, he lost me here. My wife has grown her business through LinkedIn and she pays for the Premium Service. Why? In the old days you had to hire "cold callers" to get past the secretary to get to the CEO. Now, you can target the CEO or Marketing Director on LinkedIn and cut out the cold caller.

Is the ProActive team "Social Media Experts"?

There are no experts, they are only leaders at this point.