After what was a seemingly endless streak of accelerated original show launches, April was a relatively slow month for Netflix ($NFLX). The slowdown comes after a pandemic-related production stoppage that affected shows being shown in United States and Canada in mid-March.

In April, the industry-leading streaming network added 31 shows, slightly up from March's 25, but a clear drop from February's 44 and January's 35, in what could be the beginning of Netflix digging deeper into its content backlog.

By the end of April, Netflix listed 1,331 originals on its Media Center website that lists all of the company's original show launches. Overall, and despite the production stoppage, Netflix has continued to launch new shows at a consistent clip.

However, in early spring, the number of Netflix Original launches surged. Just recently, the network was averaging 1.5 new shows per day, up from an average of 1 a day in 2019. Just two months ago, Netflix dropped 50 shows between February and March, marking its most prolific time period.

Despite the shutdown, Netflix is still scheduling to spend a healthy $17.3 billion on original content by the time 2020 closes. It's already seen major success in 2020 with the irrationally fascinating Tiger King documentary series, the moody Ozark, and guilty-pleasure binge-fest Too Hot to Handle. But production for massive hits like Stranger Things will no doubt mean that the original launch time series we're seeing here will plateau a bit, unless Netflix has a large enough originals backlog to satiate viewers.

It likely won't matter when it comes to Netflix's bottom line and subscriber numbers, however. Quarantine has been good for the streaming service, as it's picked up more Facebook and Twitter followers in the past month than ever.

The company's Facebook account now commands a massive 65.6 million followers after a monthly growth of more than 2%.

Twitter has been even better for the company in terms of growth in the past month, where its @netflix Twitter username can now tweet out to 7.8 million followers, up from 7.4 million at the beginning of April.

That signals a 4.1% growth in followers in just one month, or an additional 340,000 accounts now reading every Tweet from Netflix, some of whom are likely to subscribe or re-up.

About the Data:

Thinknum tracks companies using the information they post online - jobs, social and web traffic, product sales, and app ratings - and creates data sets that measure factors like hiring, revenue, and foot traffic. Data sets may not be fully comprehensive (they only account for what is available on the web), but they can be used to gauge performance factors like staffing and sales. 

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