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To anyone who wonders why a company should maintain an official – or even unofficial -- blog, I present the NetFlix Blog as exhibit A.

Last Monday (remember, I don’t try to report the news, just the why-it-matters part), NetFlix experienced a major disruption, affecting its distribution and shipping centers, that prevented it from shipping all its DVDs orders for the next three days.

It seems NetFlix doesn’t know what caused the mysterious technical problems or isn’t telling anyone. But to me, that’s besides the point. Big company. Lots of cash. They’ll figure it out. Not a lot of customers will be too upset. They’re also offering customers affected by delayed DVDs a 15% credit on their next monthly bills, and new customers will have their free trials extended by a week.

The story to me is how they used their blog to keep customers and the world in general informed in a timely manner.

Tuesday morning, Andy Rendich, head operations for Netflix, posted a blog explaining the problem and offered his apologies. For the next three days, Mr. Rendich posted updates, sometimes twice a day. And NetFlix customers commented on each post with good and bad thoughts.

In the end, huge kudos to NetFlix. Customer confronting customer service issues more than anything else just like to be informed. We all understand “things happen.” Hey, things break down. Things can get, in fact, out of our control. But nothing is more maddening that not knowing what the hell is going on (airlines please take note).

There’s a reason NetFlix has survived and thrived through the Internet bubble, challenges from all comers, and Web 2.0. And I bet it will continue to just fine.