The Netflix-provided data indicates that the company’s new focus on streaming service has remained strong with its customers. That’s despite a public relations fiasco earlier this year when Netflix announced, then retracted, a plan to create a separate spinoff company forcing customers to maintain two separate accounts on its previously integrated service. The company also announced a steep, unexpected price hike.
The company subsequently lost some 800,000 customers in the third quarter of 2011. But the subscribers who did stick around apparently made sure to get their money’s worth on Netflix’s $7.99 monthly streaming fee.
According to the numbers Netflix released on Wednesday, its 20 million streaming customers each watched an average of some 33 hours of content per month. In November, by comparison, Hulu’s 31 million unique viewers watched an average of just over 3 hours of video each, according to digital analytics firm comScore. Viewers of Google video sites — essentially meaning YouTube — streamed about 1.1 billion hours of content during November.
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings struck a self-congratulatory tone in a company press release on Wednesday, saying that “Netflix delights members by giving them choice, convenience and control over the entertainment they love for an incredibly low price.”
Netflix’s reported numbers, however, don’t necessarily mean customers were pleased with the service. In a survey of recent ecommerce holiday shopper satisfaction by the consumer analytics firm foreSee, Netflix’s ratings tumbled after several years of battling with Amazon for the most customer-approved online shopping site.
Nonetheless, 2 billion hours is obviously a very large number. The average American lifespan is just under 78 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At that rate, all of the streaming Netflix subscribers in the United States, Canada and Latin America combined to watch the equivalent of nearly 3,000 human lifetimes worth of content over the past three months.
Netflix’s stock jumped 11% on Wednesday to close at more than $80 per share.
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