Qwikster

0

2011 – CEO Reed Hastings announced a bombshell that, in turn, brought on Netflix’s single worst year ever. He announced that they were splitting Netflix streaming from DVD rentals. With that, the price would be doubled – $8 for 2 DVD rental plan and $8 for streaming. If you were an existing customer, you would be grandfathered in until September. This news caused their stock to fall, which continued when Hastings announced the DVD division was to be rebranded as Qwikster, and sold (which, of course, didn’t happen). Meanwhile, in 1985, Live Aid was first held. The event was organized by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure to raise funds for Ethiopian famine releif. Over 175,000 people attended what was called the global jukebox. The concert was held simultaneously in Wembley ...

Play
Read the full article →
0

2002- Netflix, the rental movie-by-mail service, initiated their Public offering. They sold 5,500,000 starting at $15 a share. They sold an additional 825,000 the next day. Of course, the Netflix stock has fluctuated over the years, including 2011, when CEO Reed Hastings tried to split their online and DVD rentals, then announced Qwikster – with hopes to sell that side of the company. Of course, he retracted that statement, but not before loosing 2/3 of stock price (was at $291 in 2011, now at $70 / share). Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 29 Vim 4.0 is released believeinkids.com became the 5 millionth domain name IEEE 1394 officially becomes “Firewire” Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Play
Read the full article →