Netflix Inc.’s move to separate its movie-streaming business and its DVD-by-mail service failed to soothe many customers’ anger over the company’s recent price increase. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings announced the split in a blog post Sunday night, saying the move was the impetus for a recent price increase that outraged customers and sent the company’s stock price plummeting. He apologized for not having given the explanation sooner.

Some are already saying Netflix is doomed. The future lies in streaming, which make Netflix’s core strengths — the DVD library and its logistics — irrelevant. And it’s competing against massive companies, including Apple and Amazon.

We used Social Radar to analyze conversations online.

Netflix sentiment trend

Negative chatter, which was already steadily increasing since July thanks to Netflix previous price adjustments, has now surpassed positive chatter for the first time.

Netflix conversation topic cloud

Qwikster, the new name of a spin-off company Netflix created to handle all its DVD-by-mail service, is currently being mentioned in 36% of all Netflix conversations, and is 81% negative.

The move highlights the challenges facing even successful companies as they navigate the transition from old media to new media. Will you continue to use Netflix and/or Quikster?

Netflix has made clear that the future is streaming, and the company expects its DVD-by-mail business to peak in 2013, at which point its Watch Instantly streaming service will be driving its growth. Netflix posted on their blog Monday that they would be removing the “Add to DVD Queue” option from streaming devices, causing some fans to get angry.

We used Social Radar to run analysis around Netflix conversations before and after Monday’s announcement.

Netflix conversation topics 1/1 – 1/16

Netflix sentiment 1/1 – 1/16

From January 1-16, all major topics of conversation were positive (green) and overall discussions around Netflix were 72% positive.

Netflix conversation topics 1/17 – 1/19

Netflix sentiment 1/17-1/19

In the past few days following the announcement, we see a lot more negativity (red) in the topic cloud, with conversations around the removal of the “Add to DVD Queue” being negative. Overall conversations around Netflix within the past few days have dropped to 68% negative.

Will Netflix customers fully embrace the company’s future vision and abandon their beloved DVDs?

We used Social Radar to analyze online conversations around the top 100 grossing movies of the year to determine the top 10 most talked about movies of 2010:

1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
2. Inception
3. Alice in Wonderland
4. Toy Story 3
5. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse
6. Iron Man 2
7. The Social Network
8. Shrek Forever After
9. Sex and the City 2
10. The Karate Kid

Sometimes your brand might run two different advertising campaigns and want to compare which generated more buzz. Other times, you may not know what generated the most chatter for your brand during a certain time period. We decided to run analysis on Netflix through the month of August 2010.

The trend chart below shows us that online chatter around Netflix spiked distinctly on 2 days this month: August 10 and August 26.

The August 26 spike generated 63% more chatter than the August 10 spike.

We used Social Radar to run some analysis and instantly determined that the August 26 spike was due to the announcement of a new Netflix iPhone app.

Similarly, by clicking on the August 10 spike, we can instantly determine that the spike in chatter was due to the Netflix deal with Epix to offer streaming movies.

The sentiment trend chart below shows the change in positive and negative sentiment in green and red over the course of the month compares to the bars representing overall chatter.

Overall sentiment chatter around Netflix was 76% positive during the month of August.

And even amid rumors that Blockbuster will likely file for bankruptcy next month, Blockbuster generated less than half of the chatter Netflix did throughout the month of August. Which offers further proof that brick-and-mortar video stores will be may soon be a thing of the past.