Can Netflix be the first social network in your living room?

I have written before about the convergence of tv and the web. CES built on that trend last week, introducing an array of media-streaming TVs and DVD players (see #7 on Lifehacker's list) that bring online services like Netflix to your TV, without the need for a Roku player. For Netflix, media streaming devices represent a tremendous opportunity for not only growing membership, but bringing a social network to their members' living rooms.

Netflix does have a community built into their site. It's a good start, but it could be a lot more. And given the prospect that Netflix will soon be front and center in living rooms everywhere, it should be.

Netflix subscribers enjoy movies, and they are all, to some degree, critics. They are the same people that took trips to the video store with friends and returned an hour later with at least one person unhappy with the choice that was made. They have an opinion and they enjoy making it heard. They also want to know what their friends are watching, and they want to commend or ridicule their choices.

The existing Netflix community doesn't make doing any of those things easy, on a computer or on a tv. But it should.

Going to the video store used to be a social experience. There's no reason picking a movie in your living room can't be the same thing.