To celebrate its one year anniversary, Hulu has released the list of its biggest hit videos. It is also introducing some new social networking functionality that lets you create a profile and share your favorite tv shows or movies with your friends. I am actually suprprised it look them so long to add this type of social features. I guess they wanted to get the watching experience right.
Most emailed:
Most embedded:
Most searched:
Boxee is again showing Hulu videos that are available as public feeds. The is a kind of a kluge but it will do for now. Boxee also announced appbox which like appstore for boxee.
It was a busy week in the world of online video.
First there is the battle brewing bewteen Hulu and TV.com. Hulu blocks their content from CBS backed TV.com and CBS claims that they have the right to strem Hulu’s content.
Then Hulu blocks Boxee from playing its content.
To cap off the week, we have the cable companies mulling an online video site that is behind a walled garden.
It seems like old media still has trouble digesting the truth. The inidcators are not encouraging.
The way I see it, they can make it easy on themselves and embrace frictionless syndication right now or do it the hard way by trying to prevent the inevitable.
I guess it is difficult to teach old dogs new tricks. Web is not about controling distribution, but about frictionless syndication. This is the key to success in the new media world.
I said this earlier today in another post and then I read that Hulu is blocking out Boxee, a neat little app that lets you watch webvideo on your TV. In this case, Hulu seems to have been forced by the content owners. I understand that they are trying to not to cannibalize their cash cow. But they can’t stop the inevitable. Ultimately they need to figure out a way to monetize web videos played on the TV.
Update: Hulu CEO, Jason Kilar, who I think actually gets new media, says his hands are tied. Here is a blog post from Boxee and from fred, an investor in boxee who is one of my favorite VCs.
When TV.com used to be a community site, Hulu was happy to have its videos featured on it. But now that TV.com has become a CBS backed destination site competing directly with Hulu, it no longer has access to Hulu’s videos. Clearly battle lines are drawn and the gloves are off.
Hulu, backed by News Corp. (owner of Fox) and NBC, has long been trying to add CBS’s content to its inventory. I guess that may not happen now.
If I were TV.com, I would offer my content in exchange for Hulu’s. Both would be winners along with consumers. I guess it is difficult to teach old dogs new tricks. Web is not about controling distribution, but about frictionless syndication. This is the key to success in the new media world.
In case you didn’t get enough of the super bowl ads you can watch them below:
There is an interesting piece in the new york times about media companies leveraging their old video assets for web video:
“Media companies are rushing to repackage their videos for the Internet, and some say they can hardly keep up with advertiser demand for more. Video clips of TV shows and behind-the-scenes outtakes are omnipresent online”
This makes a lot of sense. They are leveraging content that may not see the light of day if not for web video to gain incremental revenue.
I think sites like youtube, hulu, tv.com in the US and desiscreen in India can be great resources for the treaditional media comanies to protect their eroding revenue streams of their old media assets.
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