The Era of Netflix

-
 

Netflix is a website my friends and I frequent everyday, as it is a never ending source of entertainment for us. From TV shows to movies, to cartoons to reality TV, Netflix has it all. Even though some competitors have emerged throughout the years, Netflix still remains at the top. It is a platform that is both easy to access, and convenient in terms of payment. 
Netflix was founded in 1997 by Marc Randolph and Reed Hastings after Hastings forgot to return a rented movie and got charged $40 in late fees. After Hastings sold his software company for hundreds of millions, he then invested around 3 million dollars towards Netflix to get it started. The term "Netflix" was coined as "net" being a slang for "internet," and "flix" being a slang term for movies. Through the entrepreneurial minds of the two, they developed the online service in 1998 with a monthly subscription as the method of payment. By 2005, the movie platform had 35,000 movies on its site and had shipped out circa 1 million DVD’s to its users. I remember when Netfiix still mailed DVDs to its users before they moved to the now known method of streaming. My grandma would have the DVDs mailed to her house, often many at a time. She claimed she had to catch up on her tv shows, and Netflix was the way to do it at the time. While Netflix no longer does this method of mailing, they still are incredibly prevalent in the movie/TV world.

Netflix was the first major rental service to introduce streaming as a way of watching one’s shows or movies. One could simply log onto the site or app and have all movies or tv shows at the touch of a finger. People did not have to wait for their DVDs in the mail anymore, which was a huge deal at the time. This created an immense amount of excitement, as it was such a revolutionary feature for its users. Since this art of streaming was developed in 2007, many other platforms followed in Netflix’s footsteps. Sites such as Hulu, Amazon Prime, Crackle, AppleTV, and even networks have started their own streaming services to compete within the field. Netflix even started launching their own TV shows and original movies, leading to several Emmy and Oscar nominations. Shows such as The Crown, Dead to Me, Roma, The Irishman, and a myriad of others are examples of Netflix originals that have been nominated--and even won such prestigious awards. Despite other networks and sites now turning to the action of streaming, people are still loyal to Netflix and I sincerely doubt anyone will be unsubscribing from the service anytime soon. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dead or Alive?

-
Image
One of the most prominent and infamous political figures in today’s world is North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. He is widely known to be a dictator, and has a quite ominous reputation. Un was back again in the news recently, but not for any usual political reasons. Instead, it was reported that he was “gravely ill,” leading to his “death” after undergoing cardiovascular surgery. This was a shock to people everywhere, as nobody would have thought Kim Jong Un, a powerful figure having been credited with killing several people, is now on his own death bed. This left all who heard the news wondering, is he dead or alive? The headline that Un was seriously ill first emerged a couple weeks ago, and stated that he was not doing well after having heart surgery in months prior. Normally, reporters fact check this by investigating the claims--but North Korea is different. North Korea is largely shut off to the outside world, with no negative press regarding the country being broadcasted t
Read more

The Invention of the Printing Press

-
Image
The Printing Press was an invention that catapulted the world into the communication field, as it was the first of its kind to ever print words onto paper. Invented by Johannes Gutenberg in 1440, it was truly a technological innovation. Gutenberg’s design was so important due to his development of replacing wood with metal to print each letter on paper. The first book ever printed on the device was the Bible, which makes sense to me since it was so universally known to those across Europe and the world. It is estimated that he printed around 180 copies of the Bible, each with 1300 pages. After researching this, i was left wondering how long that would have taken for the device to print so many pages. Since the device was new in the olden days, i'm assuming it must have taken a while. Now with the printers in the 21st century, printing that many pages would only take an hour or so, but i'm sure it took much longer with Gutenberg’s invention.   The news of th
Read more

Protecting the Right to Dissent

-
Image
  Public opinion has always been something people have, whether they proclaim it or not. Back in the 1800’s and early 1900’s, the government made it a crime to criticize the government (sedition & espionage act). This was later eradicated in the future, as one can freely comment on the government and disagree with its process however they wish under the first amendment. These acts were passed to prevent the rapid spread of dissent aimed at the government during the time when the Acts were passed (war time). Many Americans were extremely against the government and executive office at the time, causing them to comment on their actions in a harsh manner. This upset the government, thus making them pass the acts to make such dissent illegal. In today’s world, this would definitely not be okay--as people are extremely vocal on their opinions of the government today.  More specifically, the government is currently dealing with the global pandemic due to the Co
Read more