‘House Of Cards’ Viewers Are Being Watched By Netflix

If you watched Netflix’s hit series House of Cards’ second season last weekend, then you might have been watched by Netflix. The subscription-only streaming service has been throwing promotions everywhere for their surprise hit series House of Cards, so when their second season was set to premiere in full, everyone was creating buzz everywhere you turned. There was so much talk about the impending season, that most fans who found the first season gripping were gearing up to clear their schedules to spend the whole weekend binge watching on Netflix.

Binge watching isn’t a new concept, but the term has been thrown about since Netflix starting churning out original television programming. Shows like House of Cards and Orange is The New Black have pushed a culture of binge watchers, and this data has become important in the structure of how we account for ratings for streaming searches such as Netflix.

House of Cards was such a big deal upon its release that even President Obama asked for people not to spoil it for him on Twitter, as he’s apparently an avid watcher of the show. Now, it seems like Netflix has released just how huge their first weekend was.

According to Variety, Netflix recorded the binge watching trends over the first weekend. So who among those were able to finish the drama? Data was recorded as 2% of U.S. subscribers were able to power through all of the episodes over the weekend. In Europe only 1% were able to finish the whole second season for House of Cards.

Marketplace spent time in the Netflix War Room to see what really happens when House of Cards went live with their second season. They approached the engineers to get more information on the trends. According to Netflix’s Reliability architect, Jeremy Edberg, the entire season finishes in 13 hours.

“We 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.”

Despite sometimes horrible recommendations that a user can receive on their scroll, Netflix actually does pay attention to what you’re watching.

Netflix spokesperson Joris Evers said:

“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?”

According to the spokesperson, Netflix already knew going in that House of Cards was going to be a hit.

“House of Cards was obviously a big bet for Netflix. But it was a calculated bet because we knew Netflix members like political dramas, that they like serialized dramas. That they are fans of Kevin Spacey, that they like David Fincher.”

Have you finished season two of House of Cards?