Netflix: 5 Things To Know About The Streaming Platform

As a pioneer of streaming, Netflix has managed to stand out in this highly competitive sector, boasting nearly 270 million subscribers worldwide by 2024. Its on-demand video services are so popular across the globe that the company's name has become part of everyday language. Here are 5 things to know about the world's leading streaming platform.

Initially, Netflix was a mail-order video rental service.

In 1997, Netflix founders Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph came up with the idea of creating a DVD rental service by mail. To test this novel concept, they sent the object to each other through the mail, and the DVD arrived intact. By 1998, they launched Netflix.com, the first website for renting and buying DVDs.

For the first ten years of its existence, this site offered movie enthusiasts a kind of video club 2.0. Subscribers could pay a membership fee ranging from 10 to 20 dollars per month to receive their desired films by mail. After watching, the subscriber would return the DVDs by mail in a pre-provided envelope.

When it went public, the Netflix stock was priced at 1 dollar.

Buoyed by the success of its movie rental service, Netflix was listed on the stock market as early as 2002. It was introduced to the New York NASDAQ under the ticker NFLX at a price of $1 per share. The following year, the platform reached the symbolic milestone of one million subscribers.

While this rental service still operated through postal deliveries, the company was enjoying increasing success and surpassed 5 million subscribers by 2006. The year 2007 marked a decisive turning point in the history of the company, with the launch of streaming that allowed subscribers to instantly watch movies and TV shows from their computer.

Netflix has benefited from the surge in mobile devices.

By 2009, Netflix had surpassed 10 million subscribers. However, the video-on-demand platform had not yet taken off, as it was in 2010 that streaming became available on mobile devices. That same year, the company offered children's content for the first time.

In the 2010s, the company set out to conquer the world by offering its services in Canada, Latin America, and the United Kingdom. It was in 2014 that the service reached several European countries, including Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, and France. By then, the number of global subscribers had exceeded 50 million.

Ten years later, Netflix has nearly 270 million subscribers worldwide and gained over 9 million additional subscriptions in the first quarter of 2024, despite a growing number of competing streaming platforms.

The platform has continually expanded its catalog.

Since 2013, Netflix has begun offering original series such as House of Cards, Hemlock Grove, Orange Is the New Black, and Arrested Development. House of Cards won three Primetime Emmy Awards that year, marking an unprecedented recognition for an internet streaming service.

At the same time, during the 2010s, the platform acquired the broadcasting rights to several successful series like Star Trek, The Twilight Zone, Twin Peaks, and Mad Men in 2011, followed by Star Wars: The Clone Wars in 2013.

The diversity of its catalog explains the popularity of the platform, especially since it offers a significant place to particular genres and themes not found on terrestrial television, such as fantasy, horror, and science fiction. The key to success lies in very assertive editorial choices and an ever-increasing number of original programs (they accounted for 25% of Netflix's catalog in 2018).

Netflix continues to innovate and diversify.

Ten years after its arrival in France, Netflix is not resting on its laurels. To maintain its leading position in the industry, the streaming platform is multiplying activities and marketing strategies.

In 2018, one in five users claimed to use someone else's codes... but that's no longer possible today. The platform started the year 2024 with 13 million additional subscribers in France, gained during the holiday season thanks to its stricter policy on account sharing among users and its less expensive subscription with advertisements.

And of course, the American streaming giant can rely on new seasons of its successful original series, such as Bridgerton and the South Korean phenomenon Squid Game, to retain its users.