 "Netflix India and Hotstar had an unnecessary Twitter spat and it was hilarious")
It was one very exciting day in 2015 when I tried to watch On Air with AIB on Hotstar. I was armed with a 6 year old Dell laptop and a broadband plan which I was told would let me stream videos without buffering. But like the rest of the country who attempts to watch streaming videos on Hotstar, I could hardly laugh along with AIB’s jokes because the buffering symbol use to always appear mid-joke. And Netflix, ah good ol’ Netflix. Here’s the number of times I have tried and attempted to subscribe to Netflix: 5. After the failed attempt, I asked my fellow comrades if they were using the online streaming services to watch their favourite TV series and films. No one did. We are the urban poor after all. Netflix or Hotstar do not seem to be very relevant in the Indian stratosphere, at least to a majority TV watching community. But you need to be in the news to be popular, and this time, after seeking guidance from Kim Kardashian and Taylor Swift , they applied the attention seeking tactics of a twitter feud. Because it was House of Cards’ star Kevin Spacey’s 57th birthday, Netflix India, in an attempt to Indianise things, decided to wish him in the fashion of a local political party, and photoshopped his face and their greetings on a huge billboard.
Happy birthday, Spacey Ji! #FU2016 pic.twitter.com/iSwaotCmLW
— Netflix India (@NetflixIndia) July 26, 2016
This reminded competitor Hotstar, w ho has a bigger subscription base than Netflix , that they had used a similar format to promote their show On Air with AIB in 2015. And Hotstar made sure that Netflix India knew that they were plagiarizing from them. After which it became a full blown Twitter feud between Netflix and Hotstar.
.@NetflixIndia We're flattered :) pic.twitter.com/93NvBsP3P3
— JioHotstar (@JioHotstar) July 26, 2016
.@hotstartweets @AllIndiaBakchod pic.twitter.com/f5D5DouNiE
— Netflix India (@NetflixIndia) July 26, 2016
.@NetflixIndia And delusion keeps us entertained! pic.twitter.com/EH7YLaelNP
— JioHotstar (@JioHotstar) July 26, 2016
.@hotstartweets Glad someone's doing the entertaining :) pic.twitter.com/AEzINmMnjO
— Netflix India (@NetflixIndia) July 26, 2016
To sum it up, no one cares, unless we get a free Netflix/Hotstar premium subscription. Till then we will wait for Twitter trolls to make fun of the feud.
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