Netflix:10 Little Known But Interesting Facts

These days, there are only a few people who have never heard about Netflix. It is a global service provider of streaming movies and TV series, and they have more than 75 millions subscribes all over the world. It used to only stream other producers’ TV series and movies; but now they’re making their own shows, some of which have become pretty popular. Although many people use Netflix daily and some even couldn’t imagine living without it; there are things not many people know about this service provider, some of which are very interesting.

1. Netflix was born before Google

Yes, you read it right. The big dinosaur is actually younger than Netflix. However, Google became popular much sooner, and possibly because it’s free for use, it has many more users than Netflix. But Netflix was founded in 1997 while Google came into the world in 1998. Makes you wonder why you haven’t heard about Netflix sooner, right?

2. Why was Netflix created?

It may only be a popular assumption, but the common belief is that Netflix’s CEO Reed Hasting got the idea to create it after he had to pay $40 for returning a copy of Apollo 13 late. A thought came into his head and he decided to put a stop on getting fined for returning VHS late by creating an online platform where you don’t have to worry about it. This idea probably didn’t sound too lucrative at the time, but now it is a very wealthy company.

3. Working at Netflix takes confidentiality to an entirely different level

Once you hear how the company functions, you’ll quickly make an association between Netflix and some sort of a secret agency. Namely, each employer at this company needs to swear to secrecy and promise that he or she will not reveal the location of the warehouse where they keep their DVDs to anyone. This may sound like too much, but the purpose of this secrecy is to keep the warehouse safe from potential movie enthusiasts who might rob it if they knew its location.

4. There are 76,897 different categories on Netflix

If you’ve ever tried the search on Netflix, you’ve seen that there are an enormous number of categories. There you can optimize your search and find just the kind of movie or TV series that you’d like to watch. So if you don’t know exactly what you want, but you approximately know the category of what you’d watch, you have more than plenty categories to choose from. These categories are neatly organized, but when it’s the April Fool’s day, they change the names of most of the categories to make them sound funny and foolish.

5. Netflix is addictive

Okay, this is not a little-known fact, as everyone who’s ever subscribed to Netflix knows how hard it can be to leave it and go do something else. Maybe it’s the wide range of choices, or they simply offer the most interesting and engaging movies and TV series, but according to the statistics, an average user doesn’t spend less than an hour and a half watching the contents there.

6. Netflix streams around 100 million hours of content daily

This sounds amazing, but considering that Netflix has around 75 million subscribers and that an hour and a half is an average amount of time spent watching TV series and movies, the numbers match. However, this still is outstanding, as if we turn those 100 million hours into days and years, we can see that it means that each day they stream around 11, 408 years of content. Of course, to many different viewers, but still, these numbers are amazingly high.

7. Netflix’s yearly revenue is approximately $6,7 billion

The fact that Netflix brings so much money is amazing, but not unlikely, as there are many subscribers from all over the world. Today, it is the most popular online movie streaming service in the world; and their subscribers have to pay a monthly fee in order to be given access to the site’s contents.

8. In the U.S., Netflix is much more commonly used than cable TVs.

Some time ago, people couldn’t imagine living a modern way of life without having cable TV. These days, many people don’t even own a television, or if they do – they use it for Netflix. At this time, no other movie and TV series streamer in the U.S. has more subscribers or revenue than Netflix. In fact, no one is even close to it now, and this company and its popularity are growing by the day.

9. Netflix organized a seemingly simple ‘Million Dollar Contest’ in 2006

Netflix created a challenge back in 2006 and it had the contestants try to put the movie “Napoleon Dynamite” into the right category. The contestants probably thought that the assignment will be a piece of cake; but it turned out that placing this movie into the right category is a very difficult job.

10. Netflix’s “House of Cards” was the first web-only TV series to win an award at Emmy

Back in 2013, Netflix won an Emmy award for producing an original TV series which most of us well know as “House of Cards”. The series won the award on the basis of “Outstanding Directing for a Drama.” This is when Netflix became so popular – this was the turning point which made people realize that they can watch new shows online, and skip the old reruns on TV. That was when it showed the world that great original TV series can be first seen online; and not on TV, and that changed people’s perspective for good. Now it is the leading streamer, and there you can watch the newest TV shows and movies; without ever having to turn on the TV or go to the cinema.