cinquain instantaneousness…

btw most of the companies are run by managers who just follow the herd so it’ll be hard to find Jeff Bezos at these places

It always saddens me when I have to explain things like this, but as a public service…

As a human beings we are separated from lower forms of life, like a worm or a skunk, only by our behavior. A vulture will peck the eyes out of another vulture to get more of the carcass. That’s OK, they are vultures, that’s what they do. But as a higher order of life, pecking someone’s eyes to get a few ounces more of the rotting meat ( or charging $4.99 for a DRM laden digital copy of an episode of The Office even though production costs haven’t increased ) is aberrant behavior. It is “greedy” and “shameful”.

Please consult that little voice in your head which you have apparently learned to ignore for more information about why being greedy is wrong.

Also, see Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos for examples of how you can make a billion dollars without being greedy.

I think Hulu will really benefit sites like videohybrid.com, alluc and tvlinks.co.uk when they can link to “legal” content and not have to go and scour sites like veoh and daily motion for every popular episode……

Todd since when is greed bad? If everything was done for charity this’ll be a whole different world my friend……I don’t know much about what happened, but making a statement like they should put fans first is actually funny…..I mean what corporate does that? so why single out NBC.com…..

Everything was fine at iTunes, people were downloading The Office, enjoying it, paying for it legally. Everyone was making money…

…but GREED has raised its ugly head, and someone at NBC who should have thought of the loyal fans first, green lighted this foolishness. The Office is the number one selling DVD on Amazon, it was like number one or two on iTunes, NBC earns the highest advertising rates for The Office, but that wasn’t enough apparently.

couple questions..Why not just upgrade the offerings at NBC.com to include ad-supported free video and higher-quality paid downloads? they currently offer only a smattering of recent episodes for free. maybe it’s because of the old thinking that your web presence must be a “shop front” of sorts to drive customers to your brick and mortar business?

If you or I were to start an online video-content business today, how many three-letter domain names would we find available, far less one that is practically synonymous with TV?

If I were running that ship, I would reassign everyone involved with the hulu decision for myopic thinking, and hire someone from the Coca-Cola school of brand management in addition to someone like maybe an Arrington (forgive the blatant blogger worship that follows) who, having chronicled the coming, shortcomings and deadpooling of many a company fighting for commercial presence on the web, can help chart a course for a re-imagined NBC.com whose purpose would not be intrinsically linked to broadcast NBC, or Universal Studios or Universal Music, or DRM or limited thinking. Even itunes is limited in scope and thinking…..where is the interactive “web 2.0″ (sorry for using a now cliched term) element… NBC.com is the way to go.

More like PR …. who is LuLu never heard until now.

Even if Hulu takes a bath in bandwidth costs for awhile whithout producing a revenue stream from the beginning, they have deep enough pockets to ride it out longer than a year. I predict they won’t be dead this time next year but will only be just ramping up, whether it’s under the Hulu name or something equally ridiculous.

Anyone tech savvy enough to know how to download The Office would just TiVo it instead for free.

I’ll make you a prediction, all NBC properties will be back on iTunes by this time next year, for the standard $1.99, hulu will be in the TechCrunch Dead Pool and YouTube will remain the most popular web video site on earth.

Make no mistake, hulu’s obstacle will not be having content people want, it will not be getting the mass eyeballs to watch this content, it will be effectively monetizing this content. It’s funny to me that the YouTube giant they are trying to slay still can’t do that…

In this way I think Hulu has an advantage over YouTube. They have the opportunity to build a viable money making platform from day one instead of losing millions per month like YouTube and having to come up with ways to “change the deal” with users by adding advertising strategies that weren’t there before. If Hulu can strike an acceptable deal with consumers relating to the amount of advertising they will put up with… they might actually become the YouTube killer they set out to be.

Every Clown Co. misstep, domain name change, uber-marketing-double-speak press release dilutes what’s in the publics Zeitgeist. At the rate they are going the general populous will think the can download The Office at fox.com.

Yes, Clown Co. has wildly popular shows ( The Office, Heros, etc ) but if no one can intuitively guess where to get them, they are all worthless.

Ask some non-geeks around you where they think they can download the latest episode of The Office, if they wanted to: theoffice.com? nbc.com? iTunes?

P.S. I notice that when entering “the office” into a Google search, the words “Clown Co” are being displayed at an ever increasing page rank – so funny.

Just take a look at the content lineup they own… are people really going to boycott their site because a few internet geeks made fun of their name and scoffed at their “old school” thinking? Don’t hold your breath.

When he gathered his ‘great and good’ online gurus about him in Carmel earlier this summer he ended the shindig with a warning ‘you are all too old,’ he said. ‘Think young and sort this mess out.’

Unfortunately someone then left the puppy doo doo called Hulu in the corner and added to the ‘mess’. It is just another example of some pretty disjointed thinking – not helped by a bunch of old model ‘big and proprietory is best’ dinosaur partners,

I can’t name names, of course, but given the raw material poor old Rupe is dealing with and prepared to listen to across the News Corp stable he is doomed. He will continue to throw money at the problem and that will hold the fort. But he needs to abandon the siege mentality and let some of the ‘indians’ through the gates to show him how it should be done.

Based on that alone lulu will win this “one letter off” brand name case. That is not even considering that hulu wants to sell books – something that lulu is well known for. Case closed.

I would like to see a TechCrunch contest for Clown Co. new, NEW name now that they are going to lose the use of hulu.