Netflixed

Twenty years have passed since a software engineer, Reed Hastings, paid a late fee of 40$ for “Apollo 13” in his local video club. That incident triggered a wild idea that would completely change the entertainment industry as we knew it. In 1997, two Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph, founded Netflix, an online DVD store, in a time when most people didn’t even own a DVD player yet.

In 1998 Netflix had 30 employees and a collection of 925 movie titles, renting and selling DVDs, rather than VHSs, via mail. In 1999 the company introduced the concept of the monthly subscription, a groundbreaking model that offered unlimited access to the offered titles, abolished late fees, due dates and shipping fees.

In 2007 Netflix announced the feature that would change forever home entertainment: video streaming. By 2014, Netflix had spread all over the world, with active subscribers in over 40 countries and a collection of thousands of shows.

Netflix was thought to be the future of movie rentals when actually it had become a real industry disruptor, as television was mainly affected and there was a good reason for this. Netflix offered ad free content! It also offered a concept that never existed before: binge-watching.

Today Netflix is an online streaming platform that has over 100 million subscribers and offers Original Content with the company being the producer and distributer of shows and movies like House of Cards, Strangers Things, Roma etc. winning Emmys, Oscars and rearranging the film industry landscape.

The push for original content will continue as Netflix plans to put 13 billion dollars into funding, buying and licensing new original shows, movies, documentaries and even reality TV.

It remains to be seen how Netflix will evolve as major competitors like Amazon and Hulu are trying to claim their share in the market and major film festivals and constitutions are hostile towards their new cinema ventures.

But one thing is for sure, Netflix has been the greatest disruptor in entertainment since the introduction of TV. The world has been incurably Netflixed and this streaming platform seems to be the most “democratic” medium available, since it offers access to art and entertainment to everyone around the world at a very low price, has tremendously boosted film and TV production and has already formed a global community and an international culture of the new era of Image.