Today is a holiday for Netflix because the streaming giant is celebrating its 25th anniversary. While the term Netflix has become synonymous with streaming over the past decade, the company has been around for much longer. To remind its subscribers of its origins, the streamer released a hilarious video exploring its history.
The Netflix nostalgia reel, titled The Story of Netflix, highlights her humble beginnings with the classic red cover. The company was first incorporated on August 29, 1997 and allowed subscribers to rent physical DVDs from its massive library. While things have changed over the years, Netflix subscribers today can reminisce with the video. Additionally, the streaming giant has promised to share more fun facts from the past on social media throughout the day.
The video begins with a look at how the Netflix cover has changed over the years, followed by a voice-over explaining the streamer’s origins. Netflix’s website was created as a digital library where subscribers could create a list of all the content they wanted to watch. “Suddenly millions of DVDs fly through the mail,” says the voiceover when the customer’s orders were delivered by standard mail. Luckily, the advancement of the internet allowed the company to change its approach and instead of waiting for their favorite movie to arrive in the mail, subscribers could just watch it online.
The video acknowledges some of Netflix’s early big hits, including house of cards, arrested development, black mirror, narcotics, The crown, and many others. These shows were monumental in garnering the streamer a loyal following that returned season after season. “Binge is the new way we looked at stuff and it gave everyone something to talk about,” says the voiceover, which is absolutely correct. Netflix is responsible for the concept of binge-watching by dropping entire seasons of a series in one day.
The video also showcases the diversity in the Netflix original series. “You had never seen a cast like this,” the voiceover points out, while referencing popular shows like Orange is the new black, Bridgetonand the record-breaking Squid Game. It also shows the different languages that subscribers can now stream in and use stranger things as an example in this case. The various hit shows that Netflix has produced over the past decade have also resulted in some interesting viral memes and trends that have everyone wanting to play chess as a courtesy The Queen’s Gambit. It’s been a long road for Netflix to get to this point, and with its 220 million subscribers, the platform still leads the global streaming market.
Some fun facts Netflix has shared with its subscribers so far is that the first DVD the company shipped was bug juice on March 10, 1998. boss baby remains the world’s most used profile icon, currently used in 11 million profiles. The first Netflix The DVD case was white, not the current shade of red, and the company began streaming in 2007.
Source: Netflix/YouTube