UPDATE 7/12/07 12:30pm
Okay, here's the bottom line. We've got some fixes that we'll implement in the next couple days. The good news is that this will improve things for many of you; the bad news is that it won't improve things for some of you - alas, probably the heaviest users. The reality is that you've uncovered a serious issue, and that the real solution is not quick. We're working on it now, and i'll have more information as it comes in, but there will not be a fix possible that cures this for those of you with many friends and many ratings. (It doesn't seem to affect Faves or Fans use.) Through your input and alerts, this has been caught - but i have no happy words for those affected (check early next week to see if it has improved for you; it could take that long for the fixes to ripple through the system and membership). More news as it becomes available. (And if anyone comes up with some work arounds that improve experience - PLEASE let me know here.) Sorry, and thank you.


UPDATE: 7/11/07 1:03pm
Thanks for the info and the alert. I think you've uncovered a flaw in the design of notes -- When we first implemented it, we hadn't fully fleshed out what happens in the cases where someone has lots of friends and lots of notes and lots of ratings and rentals. There are a number of ways we are exploring to address the problem, but i'd like to ask members who only have 1 or a couple friends and use the notes features to let us know if you are having problems. It is unfortunate that this is starting to affect our most active users. I'll let you know as the situation improves. Until then, consider some of these features unstable. My apologies (I might have been writing this blog when i should have been anticipating that problem...)

I"ve noticed a couple people reporting problems with Friends only working partially, or the Notes features not working at all... those postings were the first we had heard of it -- with no unusual outages on this end, lest you believe we just weren't reporting it.

When something goes wrong its almost always widespread (meaning: everyone has a problem at the same time -- which didn't happen in this case), or it is connected to a new software release on our side (which didn't happen either, we haven't changed this code in some time, so if it is now broken, it's not obvious what caused it). Regardless, the postings on Hacking Netflix got us to look around and see if we could deduce if there was a bona fide problem, and if so, what was going on. I certainly believe some people are having occasional issues, but at least at this early stage, they don't seem to be widespread bugs and they do seem to (magically?) self-correct. Anyway, we're still looking into it. Leave comments here if you've got these problems too, and any specifics you can relay about how they manifest and if/when they seem to self-correct. It will help us get to the bottom of it.