In light of the recent announcement that Netflix has surpassed well-established competitor HBO in terms of paid customers we thought it was time to share some data revealing the exponential growth of this leading non-traditional network.

With help from partners PeekAnalytics and Taykey we dug into Social activity around Netflix versus its competitors with an emphasis about discussions related to the Emmys and Emmy nominated programs.

Perhaps the single most dramatic piece of data in this infographic is that Netflix went from zero Emmy nominations in 2012 to fourteen nominations in 2013. With the series House of Cards, Orange is the New Black and Arrested Development, Netflix has made a commitment to providing high quality programming, but with only one Emmy win out of fourteen nominations it is clear that quality of programming is not the only explanation for Netflix’s success.

What we learn from both the Social activity around Netflix and their average audience age (18-35) is that content is an important piece of the puzzle, but even more important is access. HBO Go provides great access to HBO subscribers, but to be an HBO subscriber you need to subscribe first to a traditional cable package and thus must have a traditional television hub in the home. Today’s audience between 18-35 years of age is more often than not consuming their media on a computer, tablet or mobile device than on a traditional TV. Netflix hits this demo with access.