Holiday Cheer Heats Up Netflix

One of the phone calls I made this Christmas was to customer support at Netflix (NFLX Quote). I had bought a year of the video-rental service for my parents, and I wondered why the company was demanding their credit card number when the subscription was, after all, a gift.

That's a quibble that I wish Netflix would fix, but my point here is this: I ended up on hold for a while, and it got me thinking -- why are so many people calling Netflix on Christmas? Don't they have better things to do? Or is Netflix becoming a popular enough gift that it will see a sizable bump in subscriptions this quarter?

I asked Netflix that question, and I was told the company doesn't give out subscriber data before its earnings report. But the anecdotal evidence is pretty strong. I chatted up one of the support staff and found that, yes, lots of people were giving Netflix for Christmas. ...