People really aren't joking when they talk about binge watching House of Cards. According to a study by Procera Networks, about two percent of all Netflix streaming subscribers in the US finished the series' new season over its debut weekend. Based on Netflix's most recent user numbers, that means around 668,000 people watched the season's 13 episodes across just three days. European subscribers may have had more self-control, however, as only about one percent are reported to have finished the series before the weekend was over.

US viewers averaged 3 episodes last weekend

As usual, Netflix declined to release its viewership numbers, so the exact statistics can't be confirmed. But Procera says that it worked with "several worldwide broadband networks" to gather the data, and it's done quite a bit of analysis on Netflix traffic in the past.

Procera also found one other particularly interesting detail about House of Cards' release: despite its popularity, overall traffic from Netflix remained about the same as on any other weekend. It seems that Netflix's original content may not lead to more viewers on a given weekend, just to its existing viewers to watching a lot of single piece of content. Specifically, it found that the average House of Cards viewer in the US watched three episodes last weekend, and the average viewer in Europe watched five. That's by no means bad news for Netflix. Procera reports that somewhere between 5 to 15 percent of all viewers watched at least one episode last weekend, and that's all Netflix wants — a show that plenty of people want to watch.