Hulu debuts. There goes your work day.
Posted
Mar 12 2008, 03:17 PM
by
Kim Peterson
I've been spending way too much time on Hulu, the new video joint venture from News Corp. and General Electric's NBC Universal that opened to the public today. Now before you gag on word of yet another video site, I dare you to visit Hulu and not get sucked in. It's that easy, and it has set the standard for watching television shows and movies online.
Hulu has full-length streaming episodes from around 250 television series, including "Arrested Development" and "Prison Break." So far, it has 100 films. That's not enough content to make it the be all and end all of video sites, but it's a good start. What makes Hulu stand out in a crowded field is its design and ease of use. No wonder the site has been getting so many raves.
Shares of News Corp. and General Electric rose slightly more than a percentage point today.
Hulu's videos are free, but they come with advertisements -- typically two minutes per half-hour episode. And some videos even have banner advertisements hanging over them, which is especially annoying. At least Hulu is testing the notion of letting viewers choose which ads they want to watch. Another drawback is that there's no video from ABC or CBS.
But there's no question Hulu is being used. Even in its limited-audience test phase, 5 million viewers watched videos in one month. But the bigger issue that Hulu faces is will it make money. Silicon Alley Insider is pessimistic about Hulu's chances, noting that Hulu is paying all development and streaming costs, but gives content partners the lion's share of advertising revenue. MediaPost wonders how big an audience exists for reruns.
Hulu has been widely touted as a competitor to Google's YouTube video sharing site, but Hulu chief Jason Kilar says that nothing could be further from the truth. Hulu has no user-generated content. The premium content market "is not well served," he said at a recent event.
I have high hopes for Hulu. The service faces significant challenges, no question, but its user experience has set the bar for the industry going forward.
A cool feature of Hulu is that you can insert clips of its videos into a blog. Here's one from one of my favorite shows, "30 Rock," featuring Steve Buscemi as a private investigator:
