Netflix has only offered services in the UK and Ireland for around 7 months now. Yet according to latest figures from last months statistics, the media streaming service boasts an impressive 1 million subscribers, customers, users – whatever you want to label them. In absolute terms, 1 million isn’t that impressive since Netflix has 20 million subscribers in the USA alone. But relative to the population and relative to the time of operation 1 million is an impressive start for Netflix in the UK.
“To put that in perspective, that’s four times faster than it took Twitter to hit one million users globally and nearly twice as fast as it took Facebook and Foursquare globally,” Netflix bragged.
Of course, Facebook and Twitter started from scratch, while Netflix has over 20 million subscribers in the USA when it launched its service in the UK. Hardly on the same playing field for a fair comparison but the statistics are interesting.
The achievement of Netflix in the UK has been down to large advertising spending particularly in the TV format. It remains to be seen whether the amount of money poured into Netflix’s advertising will pay off in the long run or whether it is just a short term fad.
