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August 29, 2007

Clown Co. Gets Website and New Name: Hulu

Mark Hendrickson

47 comments »

This morning news broke that NBC Universal and News Corporation’s joint video venture, hitherto dubbed “Clown Co.”, is now to be known as Hulu.

Initially, I was a bit concerned that this could be merely a hoax, as no press releases were sent out by NBC or News Corp. themselves. However, after speaking with the Hulu representative, Christina Lee, and seeing the news spread across the circuit like vine, it does appear as though this announcement is authentic.

The Hulu website, shown above, simply solicits email addresses for a private beta to be launched in October. There is also an open letter from CEO Jason Kilar explaining the choice of “hulu” as a name: “Objectively, Hulu is short, easy to spell, easy to pronounce, and rhymes with itself. Subjectively, Hulu strikes us as an inherently fun name, one that captures the spirit of the service we’re building.”

Jason goes on to explain that the private beta will initially involve only a small number of people but will grow with time. Distribution partner sites will include AOL, Comcast, MSN, MySpace, and Yahoo.

With Hulu, NBC and News Corp. now have two placeholder video websites intended to eventually challenge YouTube, the other being Didja, a website for entertaining commercials.

Our previous coverage of Clown Co., er Hulu, can be found below:

Thanks for the tip and help Jon Burg and Allen Stern.

Update: Hulu is set to launch in the Fall around October and will focus on professional content and not take on YouTube directly as a viral video destination. The site remains solely an enterprise of the Fox/NBC joint venture, which raised over $100 million in financing from Providence Equity Partners. Videos will be played in their own embeddable branded player.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 29th, 2007 at 10:57 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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  1. beng

    August 29th, 2007 at 11:03 am

    wonder how much the domain name cost them !

  2. PublisherZilla

    August 29th, 2007 at 11:08 am

    I’m interested to see how NBC will handle a social site like this. How corporate can they make it without making it too corporate. This will definitely be interesting to keep an eye on.

  3. Nick Gonzalez

    August 29th, 2007 at 11:08 am

    Looks like it used to be a personal website http://72.14.253.104/search?q=.....#038;gl=us

  4. jon burg

    August 29th, 2007 at 11:25 am

    Yeah, I did that IP trace and it looks like it used to be a privately owned address.

    From what I’ve gathered they are looking at Hulu as a central site with content syndicated across the web via select syndication partners. Content will be professional and mostly analog media content ported over onto digital.

    At least as of a few months ago, advertising can be bought in any number of ways. It can be bought as a part of a traditional media buy, through the syndication partner, or through Hulu. Unless you are doing a buy as an extension of a specific program, you’re buying by genre, not by program.

    As I stated before, the information around advertising is a few months old and may have changed. Additionally, it should be noted, that at least as of then (a few months back) NewCo/NewSite/Hulu was running with a select group of beta partner advertisers and all positions had been filled. Once they have delivered on those partnerships they would be opening the doors to additional advertisers.

  5. A Sober Note

    August 29th, 2007 at 11:28 am

    Hulu rhymes with: voodoo, hullabaloo, hoodlum, etc. Pile on.

  6. magnusdopus

    August 29th, 2007 at 11:34 am

    Worst domain name for a company with more than $100 million dollars behind it. Closest mental association is the hawaiian term hula. And anything Hawaiian has an ‘out there’ connotation. On a scale of 1 to 10, I give it a 4. With YouTube being a 10.

    To me, it comes down to, will they let 3rd party websites like Digg embed their videos. Without that functionality, the site will not have any syndication traffic. The first YouTube video I saw, was not on a YouTube site.

  7. Jason Moy

    August 29th, 2007 at 11:35 am

    I give this a negative infinity out of 10, with YouTube being a 10. Laughable.

  8. jb

    August 29th, 2007 at 11:39 am

    all depends on what content they get

  9. LGR

    August 29th, 2007 at 11:44 am

    The real question is will anyone actually watch the videos when they go live?

  10. Todd

    August 29th, 2007 at 11:45 am

    “Who lieu”? As in “…What or who, in lieu of didja, did you expect Clown Co. to do?”

  11. David

    August 29th, 2007 at 11:46 am

    If this is a NBC site, why are there a bunch of FOX shows (Family Guy, American Dad, MAD TV, etc.) on the site?

  12. Who knew?!

    August 29th, 2007 at 11:48 am

    :P

  13. flatluigi

    August 29th, 2007 at 11:48 am

    Doesn’t everything rhyme with itself?

  14. Nick Gonzalez

    August 29th, 2007 at 11:56 am

    @David - it’s a joint venture between NBC and Fox

    I have a feeling that viral video sites achieved a great deal of attention because they were really easy ways of consuming a wide variety of video online (including copyrighted content).

    Hulu may steal viewership from these sites if they deliver professional quality content in a comparably easy to use manner. Hopefully they realize they’re competing with the ease of use offered by video pirates online.

  15. mxe

    August 29th, 2007 at 12:00 pm

    The name “Hulu” was chosen because it is cute gibberish and follows in rigid lock-step with the cargo cult of Web 2.0 aesthetics.

  16. CVOS man

    August 29th, 2007 at 12:02 pm

    Sounds like a good time for domainers to start buying Hawaiian sounding names like mahalo, wik etc. Although “surfing the web” could arguably be a uniquely Hawaiian experience for some.

  17. Mitch K.

    August 29th, 2007 at 12:05 pm

    Is this a hoax? http://www.cavenger.com is better, it’s got Entourage, let’s see Hulu beat that

  18. James Thomas

    August 29th, 2007 at 12:31 pm

    Hulu is not a hawaiian word. Hulu is an indonesian word and it refers to the origin of a river or stream.

  19. lawrence

    August 29th, 2007 at 12:33 pm

    the domain name is not that bad, that’s not to imply though i like it.

    hulu sounds like a web2 name for either a women’s or kids’ community site though, more than a video site.

    i highly doubt nbc paid the previous owner of hulu.com more than 10K

  20. jon burg

    August 29th, 2007 at 12:41 pm

    This is not a hoax. I have confirmed this with Hulu, Fox and MSN.

  21. Seth

    August 29th, 2007 at 12:42 pm

    I’ve been trying to find a word that doesn’t rhyme with itself.

  22. Dominic

    August 29th, 2007 at 12:45 pm

    You guys or Dorks. You see one screen shot and make stupid comments. Oh wait, you’re all experts. ( puke)

  23. Dominic

    August 29th, 2007 at 12:46 pm

    You guys are Dorks. You see one screen shot and make stupid comments. Oh wait, you’re all experts. ( puke)

  24. Velioncho

    August 29th, 2007 at 12:48 pm

    any news other than the name change? is the name that matters most?

    so many 2.0 startups with cute names went burst while ugilest name TechCrunch is doing well :)

  25. Dan

    August 29th, 2007 at 12:49 pm

    Dominic,

    I second that. Wait, no, you did it yourself. Ass.

  26. Ian Bell

    August 29th, 2007 at 1:19 pm

    I think Hulu is a good idea. They are giving top tier content to viewers, and keeping the videos professional. I am not so hot on the name personally, but we will see how things unfold.

    The first thing that came to mind when I heard “Hulu” was “Mahalo” and that is not a good thing to be associated with.

  27. Ed

    August 29th, 2007 at 1:20 pm

    They should have bought clownco.com

  28. trade dvds GURU

    August 29th, 2007 at 1:50 pm

    This will succeed and why??? Because they own ALL the content that people want. Other video sites will become second class citizens only having crappy home videos that you browse for a good laugh and that’s about it.

  29. Rex Dixon

    August 29th, 2007 at 1:55 pm

    I liked the name “Clown Co.” as reflected on my coverage of it this morning. Oh well… Hulu it is. I’m sure it will grow on people unless everyone pushes “Clown Co.” - which IMHO is a better branded name already thanks to TC and everyone else!

    Rex

  30. Bryan Haggerty

    August 29th, 2007 at 2:26 pm

    I hope they bring on board the MySpace design team.

  31. Joel Strellner

    August 29th, 2007 at 2:35 pm

    I think hulu sounds a bit like “who knew”. Which makes me think, who knew they were going to suck this bad and who knew it was going to be so good.

    @21. Seth: Have you thought about Orange? I have yet to find a rhyming word that rhymes with Orange.

  32. Michael Arrington

    August 29th, 2007 at 3:57 pm

    Just don’t translate it into Swahili.

    http://www.techcrunch.com/2007.....the-irony/

  33. Jeff R

    August 29th, 2007 at 4:35 pm

    I will sell them want.tv for $1M, maybe i could get a $50m valuation just on the name

  34. Goorsha Billu

    August 29th, 2007 at 11:31 pm

    In the ancient Ethiopian language of Geez (and modern day Ethiopian language of Amharic), hulu means “all”, “all of it”, “all of them”.

    Please go to:

    http://www.AmharicDictionary.com

    and type in “All” in the first search field and click on the “Search” button. The first translation that comes up is “Hulu”.

  35. Jools

    August 30th, 2007 at 12:13 am

    Funny name!

    Reminds of a danish TV channel that started years ago named Zulu. Everyone thought it was a pretty lame name, but their profile was so different and fresh from the other TV channels that it seems like a very natural name today. And one of the shows they started airing was named “klovn” which means clown.

    Just a little anecdote.

  36. fluencev

    August 30th, 2007 at 5:09 am

    the word means a sound in Chinese
    sounds like a good name
    i like it

  37. Mark

    August 30th, 2007 at 6:37 am

    From beginning to end… a recipe for disaster. Here’s hoping that money can make up for passion, insight, ingenuity, inspiration and drive… ooohhh, just like snapple.

  38. online buy prior xanax

    August 30th, 2007 at 4:11 pm

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  39. Adam Dunford

    August 30th, 2007 at 8:06 pm

    If we’re talking word association, I can do you all one better. In Finnish, the word “hullu” means “crazy.” How about that!

  40. Frank

    August 31st, 2007 at 3:27 am

    I think it’s a great name!

  41. DayNovo

    August 31st, 2007 at 3:05 pm

    In getting to the name News Corp had to actually acquire a family’s photo site at hulu.com.
    Will the Internet majors go even further to secure the names that they are looking for? For further analysis check out:
    http://sneakybusiness.typepad......-afte.html

  42. steve

    September 10th, 2007 at 8:18 am

    I cant believe that nbc actually thinks this will work. Im going to download ALL of my NBC shows for free .I started purchasing them only when they were on I tunes .Now i will never ever buy another episodes from such a backward thinking company . LOOSERS.And im going to sell your cheap ass stock .

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