One of the inventions that we learned about in class from someone else was Netflix. I believe this company has transformed itself into what it is today very greatly and carefully. When they first came to be in 1997, they were renting out movies in DVD form and having the movies be mailed to people's houses. This was very innovative at the time because their competitor was Blockbuster which was a movie rental store and if you wanted a movie you had to go rent it out in person. A few years later in 1999 Netflix became a subscription site where people could subscribe and watch movies from a specified list, from the comfort of their own homes. In the first year of doing this, Netflix had 239,000 subscribers and by 2003 they had around 1 million subscribers. As the increase of Netflix's popularity continued to climb, Blockbuster was getting hit hard and people didn't like what the store had to offer as much anymore. Just subscribing to a website and getting movies from there was a lot easier than going out to the store to rent a movie and having to bring it back. I do remember those Blockbuster days and I personally thought it was a fun time to go and see the immense amount of movies they had. I believe this was the case though because I was a very small child like 3-7 years old and I wasn't the one doing the work of driving and paying for the movies. Blockbuster sadly declared bankruptcy in 2010 and all of their locations had closed down by 2014. If Netflix hadn't been so innovative and eaten them alive, then there's a possible chance they would still be successful today only if they kept up the technological trends. If there's one thing I've learned throughout the years is that if technology keeps improving and a technological company doesn't keep up with the new trends, they will end up dying out. Technological advances and new and improved products and services are very important to consumers, so if a company stays at a standstill, it will continue to have some loyal customers but their numbers are likely to drop greatly if they don't change things up. As Netflix was the very first streaming site, they were already on top of their technological game when it came to competitors. This was until 2007, when Hulu came into the game and they offered subscriptions for people to watch TV shows. In 2008 was when Netflix completely switched to streaming but they were still focused on movies at the time with some TV shows, so technology wise Hulu came a bit first, but for target markets, Netflix was still on top when it came to movies. In today's times, I personally use both of these streaming sites because still today they offered different things which make consumers feel the need to have both of the streaming sites. In 2013, Netflix started streaming its first original content which was called 'House of Cards' which was very popular and people loved it. All throughout the years, Netflix has evolved to match the technological needs of consumers and to keep up with the advances necessary to stay on top of their game. In today's day in age, there are many more streaming sites including Disney Plus, HBO Max, Paramount Plus, and Prime Video which are just a few I could come up with from the top of my head. Netflix really started the trend of online streaming services and people even have gotten rid of their cable subscriptions due to the streaming sites having what they need rather than regular TV channels. Cable services are really on their way out as there is a streaming service for most things people need and like to watch. I personally think Netflix had a huge impact on the technological world of how we get out the movie and video content and they are successful and know what they are doing.
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