The premiere of the second season of the Netflix series “House Of Cards” was kind of a big deal. How big, you ask? Well, President Obama tweeted a plea for no spoilers. Now, there are newly some released details from the streaming giant on how the show did on its return.
Per Variety, 2% of all U.S. Netflix subscribers—last month the service had a “reported 31.7 million” subscribers stateside alone—were able to completely finish the political drama’s second season within the first weekend. Europe was slightly behind with only 1% of subscribers finishing.
Interestingly, Marketplace was holed up at the “Netflix War Room” at the time of the “House of Cards” premiere and saw just to what lengths the company kept tabs on the watching habits of its subscribers. “We monitor what you watch, how often you watch things. Does a movie have a happy ending, what’s the level of romance, what’s the level of violence, is it a cerebral kind of movie or is it light and funny?” said spokesman Joris Evers.
As the second season went live, Netflix engineers payed close attention to all the hundreds of devices that are used to watch the service to make sure the show was working on every single one of them. The engineers can even keep track of data in real time like “how many people are streaming the show on these devices, where they are, and who’s binging.” To prove the point, the company’s Reliability Architect told the site that after the nearly thirteen-hours-long first season of “House Of Cards” premiered, the company “looked to [see] if anybody was finishing in that amount of time. And there was one person who finished with just three minutes longer than there is content. So basically, three total minutes of break in roughly 13 hours.”
So while you’re binging on the new “House Of Cards,” just know that there are engineers who are playing close attention to how long you’re just sitting there in front of your screen. And they may just spill your shameful secret to a journalist.
Or you can tell us. How did you watch "House Of Cards" season 2? Have you finished yet? Either way, if you’re a fan, this talk with writer Beau Willimon on "Charlie Rose" is a must watch.