> Besides, ITS NETFLIX. Everyone has a Netflix account or a family member's login
That's hilarious, where did you get that idea?
Netflix has roughly 35 million accounts in the US, out of a population of over 300 million. It's the most popular streaming service, but stream isn't that popular yet... internet denizens always forget we are a tiny minority of the US population.
It's not nearly as tiny as you make it out to be. It's not like everyone would ever get their own account. In my household of four people, we have four profiles. Most accounts probably cover several people. I'd be interested to learn how many Netflix account profiles there are in the US. It would be a much more meaningful way of calculating Netflix's reach. I'd guess that well over half the population has access to a Netflix account.
> I'd be interested to learn how many Netflix account profiles there are in the US.
Exactly, that's the real question here. Anecdotally, about half the people I know have access to Netflix.... but that's heavily skewed towards young tech workers. I'm not sure how that matches the general population.
Also remember that there are many Netflix customers that use the physical DVD service without any streaming (I know many older parents in this group).
Which accounts for both those who are using a relative's login, or multiple family members in a household. There's five people in my house using my account, all immediate relatives. A bit more than a year ago, household penetration of streaming was 40% in the US[1] (combined Netflix, Hulu and Amazon). The original statement was obvious hyperbole, but I wouldn't be surprised if well over 100 million people had access to Netflix through those ~35 million accounts.
You'd be surprised, I know many folks that are convinced over half the country uses Netflix. Filter bubbles can heavily influence those perceptions.
> There's five people in my house using my account, all immediate relatives.
My dorm shared an account in college... we had 8 people on the same account. 5 now have their own accounts, including myself, and the rest stopped using Netflix. Conversely, my parents and their neighbors are DVD-only Netflix customers.
I think the truth is somewhere between 100 million and 35 million streamers, which still puts it at (late) "early adoption". In that context the spread of streaming exclusives is a little worrying... "Stream anything at any time for a flat rate" is a very disruptive vision. "Some services have some of what you want" is a much weaker sell.
More relevant: 35M accounts in ~125M households in the US. ~25% penetration into households (throwing in a fudge factor for overlap). Certainly easy for an HN poster to be in a situation where everyone they know has it.
That's hilarious, where did you get that idea?
Netflix has roughly 35 million accounts in the US, out of a population of over 300 million. It's the most popular streaming service, but stream isn't that popular yet... internet denizens always forget we are a tiny minority of the US population.