Map shows the rise and fall of Blockbuster video in the US over 30 years

A US map that shows the rise and fall of movie rental company, Blockbuster video, has gone viral on Twitter.

Jon Erlichman shared the interesting graphic on the platform and the tweet has now gained over 118,000 likes and 26,000 retweets.

The map shows the company’s meteoric rise within 16 years, from just five stores in August 1989 up until January 2005 where there were a record number of stores across the country (5,734).

Once valued as a $3 billion company, in just one year, Blockbuster earned $800 million in late fees alone.

However, the number of stores began to decline from February 2005 due to not being able to keep up with their competitors such as Netflix who were offering a DVD-by-mail service without late fees.

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Within five years, over 1,800 stores were closed and in September 2012 there were under 1,000 remaining.

By January 2014, there were only 100 stores remaining and the company was left behind with the rise of online streaming services. It meant the company just had one remaining store in January 2018 which is located in Bend, Oregon and still open to this day.

The company filed for bankruptcy with over $900 million in debt.

The tweet caused people to react with their nostalgic experiences of going to the video rental store when they were growing up:

Some people shared that their old abandoned Blockbuster store is still around:

Others have even kept their Blockbuster membership cards:

It seems that many people have visited the last remaining store in Bend, Oregon too:

Despite the new technology of online streaming, it appears that people have still got a lot of love for Blockbuster, could we ever see a revival?