**6. Some of the most popular OTT platforms for watching movies**

Amy [12] mentioned three OTT platforms as the early starters of streaming. Below are the three and how they started.

## **6.1 YouTube**

YouTube was founded by Steve Chen, Jawed Karim, and Chad Hurley in 2005. The three founders met while working for PayPal. Hurley was a designer while Chen and Karim were engineers. The name (YouTube) was suggested on February 14, 2005, by the trio, and in May 2005, the site was launched. The site became popular in December 2005 after Saturday Night Live aired its first short video known as "Lazy Sunday". Google helped to promote the clip as it could only be found on Google as "SNL rap video", "Lazy Sunday SNL", or "Chronicle of Narnia SNL". On Google, the video was linked to YouTube, and with that, the video went viral.

While the video went viral, it also created a problem for YouTube as the company expenses increased with no strategised means of creating revenue. As of May 2023, YouTube has 2.1 billion monthly active users based all around the world [13], about 300 hours of videos are uploaded every minute, and about 5 billion videos are watched on YouTube every day.

#### **6.2 Netflix**

Netflix was launched in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph. At the time Netflix was launched VHS tapes were expensive and DVDs were not used widely. The founders visualised a future with a website where movie watchers would receive or order movies with a click of a mouse. In the year 2000, the founders discovered that they were losing money, and so Hastings flew to Dallas from San Jose to meet with Blockbuster who had 7700 stores worldwide that were selling microwave popcorn and also renting VHS tapes. Netflix only had 300,000 subscribers then and to get movies to the customers, it relied on USPS. In the same year, when Hastings went to meet Blockbuster, he thought of a plan to rent movies to customers by streaming them over the Internet. However, the technology was not available at that time.

To start with, Hastings, approached Blockbuster for him to buy a 49% stake of Netflix for #50 million of which Netflix will then absorb the Blockbuster name. This is because he wanted Netflix to become Blockbuster's streaming service but Blockbuster rejected the proposal. After multiple rejections by Blockbuster, Hastings went back travelled back and began working towards promoting Netflix. Blockbuster later launched its subscription service in 2004 but it was already too late as Netflix had already gained ground.

In 2007, Netflix introduced a streaming service. In 2013, it produced its first show premiered titled "House of Cards". From then, it started partnering with other companies such as PS3, Phones, and Xbox among others. Presently, Netflix has around 232.5 million paid subscribers worldwide as of the first quarter of 2023 [14].

#### **6.3 Hulu**

On October 29, 2007, Hulu was launched. It was owned by AOL, Facebook, MSN, Myspace, Comcast, and Yahoo. It was a joint venture. The first contributor was NBC later Fox followed. It was announced to the public on March 12, 2008, in the U.S. It was inspired by Netflix. But unlike Netflix, it was spearheaded by Hollywood executives who saw the benefit of streaming. One of which was making money from making available to the public older television shows and newer television shows. Over the years, Hulu has changed to a service where one can watch current episodes of television shows.

Hulu is divided into two. One is the free plan service which contents are limited to users and are accessible through computers only while the other is the paid service which contents are not limited to users and can be accessed through Hulu applications on mobile phones, computers, and connected televisions. In November 2010, Hulu Plus was launched which offered an expanded content library that includes, full seasons, more episodes of shows, and day-after access to current season content via the free Hulu. In 2016, in a joint venture with Yahoo called Yahoo View, Hulu rebranded its free content. In the following year, live television streaming was launched by Hulu. Currently, the company has over 20 million subscribers. In the second quarter of 2023, the Walt Disney Company reported that Hulu had 48.2 million paid subscribers, up from 45.6 million in the corresponding quarter of the previous fiscal year [15].
