History

I had initially planned on making my next post to be about Walter White and his story in Breaking Bad but instead I chose to postpone that and talk about the history of Netflix. 

I myself have had Netflix for what fells like many many years. For a long time I actually thought that I had in fact taken the plunge and signed up for the service when it was first released, however when I actually did some research into when Netflix was founded I swiftly realised I was talking a lot of nonsense! 

Netflix was founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph (I know I was pretty shocked too). This means that the company has actually been around for about 18 years! I myself am 21 so would be rather impressed with my 3 year old self if I had managed to sign up to Netflix. 

Netflix was initially setup as a video rental service, over time offering customers the chance of unlimited rentals for a low monthly cost. It was essentially the online version of Blockbuster if you will, meaning customers could arrange rentals online and get them delivered in the post.

It would be about 10 years before Netflix would be able to offer users an online streaming service that would allow customers the ability to watch film/TV on their personal computers. 

In this ten years though Netflix had a following of over 4.2 million users which has only grown since. 

From the years 2008 to 2010 Netflix expanded there target audience from computer users to anyone that had an Xbox 360, PS3, Nintendo wii, iPod, iPad, iPhone, any internet connected TV as well as any other internet enabled device. The service was also made available in 2010 in Canada. 

It wouldn't be until 2012 that Netflix would become available in the UK (which is a slightly more realistic date for me to have initially signed up for the service haha) Netflix was now available in America, Canada, Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe including the United Kingdom, Ireland and in the Nordic Countries. In 2012 Netflix was also awarded its first Prime Time Emmy Engineering award. 

From 2012 until now Netflix has expanded even further becoming available in the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg and Switzerland. They revieved 31 primetime Emmy nominations including outstanding drama series, comedy series and documentary or nonfiction special for “House of Cards”, “Orange is the new black”, and “The Square” respectively (all tv series produced by Netflix). House of Cards went on to win three Primetime Emmy Awards. Netflix was actually in fact the first internet TV network nominated for the primetime Emmy. In 2014 Netflix won 7 creative Emmy Awards for House of Cards and Orange is the new black. 

Netflix now has over 50 million users world wide, a massive leap from the initial 600 thousand American users they had in 2002. Netflix is a prime example of a company that has grown, expanded and worked with technology available to stay active to provide its users with what they want. 

Companies like Blockbuster a company that offered a very similar service as Netflix to begin with have fallen at the wayside as time has progressed but Netflix has been willing to develop and grow which has helped it thrive and prosper as a company.