'Kway-way'? This Weird Non-American Word Baffled Netflix Customers When The Company Launched

Getty Images LatamNetflix CEO Reed Hastings

In the early years after Netflix launched in 1997, its customer service lines were pummeled with requests from people asking "What's my kway-way?"

People were baffled by what "queue" meant, The New Republic writes.

The Netflix queue is the tool subscribers use to organize the movies they want to watch.

Rivals have adopted this feature as well. One example is that Amazon has a "Books Queue" which invites subscribers to advertise the books they plan to read with other people.

Netflix didn't popularize the word, but "queue" became commonly associated with the streaming service in 2004.

The term is used in Britain to describe what Americans usually call a "line," as in people lining up to get into a movie.

It has been used in British and American computing to describe coded command orders since the 1960's, but TNR's Alice Robb writes that the idea to use the term as the name for Netflix's method of prioritizing your orders came from chief product officer Neil Hunt, who happens to hail from England.

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