Ahead of Netflix reporting its latest quarterly earnings performance Wednesday afternoon, a number of investment firms are increasingly skeptical about the streaming giant which is about to get a lot more competition in this space. Indeed, several Wall Street banks in recent weeks have actually cut their price targets for Netflix stock as they wait to see how well the company can weather the storm of content churn and the attraction of new services, like Disney+.
The current glass-half-full view of Netflix, however, is as follows: There are some major draws on the horizon, like the imminent release of a new season of The Crown, as well as Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman which will no doubt be an utterly fantastic mob flick. And based on new data, Netflix is also the streaming home for what happens to be the most-talked-about show in the world, based on an analysis of metrics including Twitter data.
Working with Sony and psychotherapist Aaron Balick, Currys PC World put together some research using Twitter to offer some insight into some of the most popular shows in the world. Among the findings:
In tandem with Parrot Analytics recently pegging Netflix’s Stranger Things as the most popular streaming series, this new research identifies Stranger Things as the “most talked about” series of the past two years, with more than 32 million mentions on Twitter.
Also scoring high, via this metric, was HBO’s now-concluded Game of Thrones, which just won big at the Emmys and has at least one prequel series on the way. It’s generated more than 11 million Twitter mentions. Of course, this is only one data point that speaks to overall popularity and doesn’t necessarily directly correlate. Stranger Things, for example, is a popular show because it’s truly great, not as a byproduct of the fact people are talking about it on Twitter.
On a related note, House of Cards has generated almost 3 million mentions on Twitter during this same period. We can argue about its relative popularity, which doesn’t seem to have the staying power of Stranger Things’ — and which, again, speaks to the fact that there’s not a direct correlation here. But it’s still interesting data to be aware of.
And speaking of Stranger Things, Netflix hasn’t announced the start of filming yet, but there are unconfirmed reports that filming has indeed begun. With Reddit awash in claims that, for example, Hopper’s Chevy Blazer has been spotted by some eagle-eyed sleuths who’ve spied on filming in Georgia.
