If yesterday’s cushy article on Hulu in Fortune is any indication, Internet TV site Hulu is getting ready to leave private beta and launch to the public. Press like this doesn’t just happen without the company asking for it. They’re preparing for the big show.
Hulu was expected to launch this month anyway, and the article mentions an “early March” release. And apparently they’re gathering analysts for a Monday briefing.
And as much as I respect both of the writers (David Kirkpatrick and Adam Lashinsky), the article is way too generous in its portrayal of Hulu and its history. An example quote: “But the secret of Hulu’s initial success - the thing that made believers out of the skeptics - is the power and simplicity of the website itself.” Another: “The result is the elegantly transparent interface that has wowed even its biggest detractors.” Fortune seems very appreciative to get this exclusive level of access. While they mention that bloggers were highly critical of Hulu prior to launch, they fail to talk about the very good reasons behind that criticism.
Good thing I’m here to remember.
Hulu: A Very Troubled Start
In the months following the company’s March 2006 initial press release, we gave the joint venture a lot of grief for failing to pick a name for the project, eventually settling on a name - Hulu - that meant “cease” and “desist” in Swahili (ironic, given that Hulu’s parent companies send out so many of them), copying Google’s mission statement, and receiving not the greatest vote of confidence from NBC Universal’s own chief digital officer (one of the joint venture partners).
Behind all of this criticism was a high degree of doubt that NBC and News Corp. were ever going to get Hulu out the door before the joint venture became irrelevant. In September, NBC had even announced a video downloading service that appeared to cannibalize its own joint venture with News Corp.
But all that changed when we saw the beta product. Hulu did a lot of things right. The video quality was acceptable. The controls were intuitive. And there was some great content on the site, including a few movies and some archived television shows.
So yeah, we changed our tune on Hulu once the product actually launched, but that’s the point. The product spoke for itself. Two months ago, users even voted Hulu the top video startup award at the Crunchies, beating out Joost and others.
Here We Go Again?
The problem with Hulu was the sheer amount of hype and unfulfilled expectations the company generated a full eight months before it went into private beta. Early messaging was terrible (a focus on respecting copyright, and the fact that they were creating what they called “the largest advertising platform on earth.” instead of talking about user features). A product was promised by Summer 2007 but was delayed repeatedly. Eventually they had to acquire a Chinese startup to get to the finish line.
The product still has issues - I regularly find that streaming is jumpy, for example. That shouldn’t happen at all given their resources, and certainly not in a controlled private beta. They have also been very slow to get archived content on the site - even though it would have been a great way to fight the writer’s strike that resulted in an absolute halt to any new stuff. People outside the U.S. still can’t view the content.
In short, Hulu is far from perfect. And if the Fortune article is a signal of a new round of hype around the service, don’t be surprised when bloggers criticize them for not meeting those sky high expectations. And it’s not too late to start calling this thing Clown Co. again.
My suggestion would be to skip all the hoopla this time and let the product speak for itself. Burn those marketing and PR dollars on a few more servers to keep the streaming steady. Don’t hold analyst briefings. And let the users find you because their friends can’t stop talking about how great the service is. See here for an example of how that’s done.
A cat has 7 lives… I wonder how many of these Hulu has burned up already? More interestingly, will there be an article about “Hulu Mania” a year from now? Nice analysis Michael!
Jon
http://woodmarvels.com - Create Unique Memories!
As long as their content, which can be watched for free all over the net anyway, does not gets open to the public outside the U.S they will never be as successful as they want to be.
The days of serving only to a select audience are numbered, and in many ways just retarded.
The whole “Clown Co.” thing reminds of some kid in grade school trying to make up a nickname for someone he didn’t like but not being able to get it to stick.
Hulu is solid. I have been using it for months. They need more movies IMO, but their videos are good quality and the ads are short. I will continue to use this site as my primary source for Free and Legal TV over the net.
Hulu is nothing more than lame attempt by Fox and NBC to create a video player. Long live YouTube.
“The whole “Clown Co.” thing reminds of some kid in grade school trying to make up a nickname for someone he didn’t like but not being able to get it to stick.”
I agree COMPLETELY. Hulu is a very solid product.
Also, I commented this is the last Hulu post: why are people complaining about not having access to Hulu outside of the U.S. - do you not realize that this is not some ghetto torrent site and that there are significant licensing agreements required with producers/studios/etc. when broadcasting a show internationally. Also, do you not realize that Hulu is run based on earning money from ads and that as a relatively new startup they haven’t gone around setting up country-specific advertising yet, so the extra bandwidth required to serve international customers would just be a LOSS.
other - you’re right. problem is hulu has to compete with all those “ghetto torrent sites” that actually work pretty damn well.
another vote for hulu — it’s great. Only complaint is lack of content (that’s improving, because they are doing things, you know, legally). Also, movies are “edited for content”, like they’d be on commercial TV.
Some minor navigation/usability foo they are fixing all the time.
I’m worried when it goes public that performance will suffer
When it’s just a couple networks it doesn’t work. Every network wants to do it themselves. The only way Hulu would work is if it were a 3rd party.
And Hulu is great for watching streaming, but why did they pull out of the seemingly more-money-making iTunes? iTunes had everything available at once and you could watch it offline. Now none of the shows I watch are available on iTunes anymore.
hulu is great. everybody i know watches it.
if they get a cool backend analytics strategy in place, they can much much more.
on #7, mike - those “ghetto torrent sites” are for you.. hulu is for the rest of us.
“clown co”??? if you’re into name calling, here’s my response — you’re a clown, a sharlatan, an a**hole, a pig, a media whore…
you want more?
If it were a Google product the hype would be tolerated. Take Google Apps. Every time it’s brought up people say it’s an Office killer. That’s just a load of Hulu.
It’s good to see that Hulu have taken their time to try and get the service right, through sensible aquisitions and time in beta.
With a whole host of content delivery networks popping up, it’s good to see that Google/YouTube isn’t the only one who has the technology to pull off online video.
Good luck to Hulu.
Hi Michael,
I just wanted to say it was a pleasure to watch your interview with Charlie Rose yesterday.
I am not a tecchie, even though I lived on the SF Peninsula for 20 years, before moving northward, and I watched the whole computer industry “happen”, some while at Stanford; however, for the past 10 years, now at 61, I have been determined to hang onto this “new world” ride, with both hands.
I know that one MUST be facile in it and embrace it, but it is a constant challenge to do that when one has been largely self-taught. Your analysis of what is happening and, more importantly, where you think things are headed, makes me realize that I do need to carve out a little time to check in on a tech blog, even though I don’t understand most tech-speak. I’ll make it your blog, as you are the first computer professional whose interview I was able to understand for the whole time! Kudos!
Best to all — Em
Michael, this article makes you sound angry and bitter against hulu.
“Early messaging was terrible (a focus on respecting copyright, and the fact that they were creating what they called “the largest advertising platform on earth.” instead of talking about user features).”
There messaging was in line for shareholders who aren’t smart enough to give a damn about user features.
Hi Michael. I am not enough of a tech guy to really know too much-just enough to get by, but I think your thoughts on hulu are great.
Michael - What is your issue with Hulu? Is it that they give their exclusives to mainstream publications that the average American cares about in hopes of getting a positive spin unlike the startups that give their exclusives to you, whom the average American has never heard of, in hopes of getting the breathless hype for which you are so well known? Does it drive you crazy that companies that actually matter outside of the Valley and make products and services that get mass adoption don’t really care about you or have any use for you? Are you telling them you will keep writing negative pieces until they throw you a bone? Help me out here because to an outside observer like me it sure seems like all of those things are true. Plenty of companies have much rougher starts than Hulu and never recover, while Hulu has quickly developed an excellent service that is #1 in the category for many people, yet you keep beating the drum against them. It seems like you should be congratulating this joint venture of large companies for being so successful so quickly and eating crow over your completely wrong predictions of their doom. If you have a logical argument here, I’d love to hear it and would be happy if you proved me wrong on my guesses above.
And you never got back to me on this question a while ago. I own opentechcrunch.com - based on the logic you’ve used repeatedly in hundreds of posts I’m assuming it’s cool if I post all your content on my site but get rid of those lame ads you have and maybe use my own. I’d like to add some cool features that you don’t have as well. Please let me know. Thanks.
the delegate - actually, if you click to the link, that messaging was for the consumer press.
erik - the issues are - 1) dissapointment at the fortune article, because i respect those writers and that was the biggest puff piece I’ve seen in a while, and 2) Hulu’s continued willingness to set extremely high expectations with the press prior to showing their software. which is pretty much what i said in the post. And they haven’t ignored us, they’ve actually been pretty good about reaching out to us and other bloggers. I just really don’t like startups that talk about how great they are before they are willing to release a product.
you know what would have been great? If Hulu quietly launched with a simple post on their blog and minimal outreach to the press. They may have been amazed at the kind of viral response they would have gotten. but instead they strategiezed and plotted, and found a vanity press outlet to write a puff piece. That’s so 1998.
“Plenty of companies have much rougher starts than Hulu” - yes they do, and we criticize them for it. But none of those startups (that I can think of) made such grand promises and then got burned so badly. The great startups - all of them - started off with great software first.
Regarding your desire to republish content, get in line. we have dozens of copyblogs already.
We actually took it very easy on Hulu for a while, including our post on their launch.
One last thing - your comment is borderline trolling, which tells me you’re not really that interested in my response, you just want to yell and jump about. why not start your own blog for that?
Hulu is going to be big. The video resolution is great compared to YouTube and it’s associated clones. Plus the UI is fantastic. It changed the way I design - - for sure.
What’s the deal with veoh.com? It seems like the content overlap with hulu is about 90% and in many cases veoh drives you to hulu. Can we call start sites and crib hulu’s content? Maybe I’m missing something.
Chris - i actually agree with you. They’re tech and product people seem to have fought through what I heard was a mountain of politics. It’s amazing that the beta product is as good as it was - it may actually be unprecedented in a big co joint venture.
Michael,
I think time will decide how well Hulu is doing. They haven’t even launched yet. In your mind only was their launch terrible. And, if you actually think Kliavkoff’s opinion matters here then you obviously don’t know him very well.
I love hulu so far. The video quality is adequate for viewing on the computer, I’ve not had any trouble with the stream, and the ads are not too invasive. On the downside, the selection seems random and you can’t count on being able to find something; some shows have whole seasons available on line, but most are just random episodes. If they could get the selection of shows predictable and ABC and others on board they would really have something.
HULU has some great content but I Still like Joosts UI and hope that Joost will talk to HULU partnering in the future.
Joost had the same hype surrounding it that HULU has and with live streaming on Joost being tested and rumors of a web client coming i think that Joost might still be a contender in the space .
http://www.joostteam.com/2008/.....streaming/
Hey Michael - I was interested in your response. Thanks for getting back to me and sorry if I “yelled and jumped about” too much, but I do feel pretty strongly that you (and lots of other bloggers, too) are perceived as unbiased news sources by many (including some of the commenters on this post) but in reality are very biased and self-interested in their writing. If sites like you do replace mainstream news (as they already do in many niches), this starts to matter. I know this is a whole separate discussion and blogging is supposed to be a free-for-all, but it just bugs me, especially since you have done an excellent job of breaking exclusive news so have become a must-read for me (and many others), no matter how much I dislike your opinion pieces.
Of course, this is only my perception, it’s your blog, and people certainly seem to like it. After all, if people didn’t like this kind of reporting, Fox News wouldn’t be #1! Anyway, thanks for the response.
Battlestar Galactica is starting up in April. Will the new episodes be on Hulu, and how soon after they air on cable? Could be a huge opportunity to drive traffic to the site - if they’re on Hulu I will definitely be there.
I love Hulu…
I live forty miles north of San Francisco, and have access to only one public channel. The alternative until Hulu was cable, and I refuse to support the only cable company available in the area ( the same who are trying to control the internet…).
For years I’ve been wondering, why can’t we have commercial TV on the net?
I even called some TV companies in SF asking them if it was possible to do so… Engineers felt that the technology wasn’t available yet…
And finally comes Hulu, the quality is pretty good, even in full screen, I only wish for a smoother stream, I don’t know if it’s due to a slow internet connection , I have DSL and at night the download = 1287 kb/s , that’s the nature of the beast in the USA.
Or maybe it can be improved, like the article said by adding servers? I wouldn’t know I’m not a technician…
Anyway, Thumbs up for Hulu, keep the good work!
Erik,
Agreed. The opinion pieces are odd and usually uninformed. The breaking news pieces are great and useful. Writing about the web with absolute authority. I don’t see anyone of the Techcrunch staff with a very successful company/exit. Without that the opinion stuff is a bit silly.
I like Hulu, been there from early beta days. We are seeing the future of TV.
Why would anyone throw cold water on the venture?
I’m surprised they are only funded to $100 mil., surely this is a billion dollar enterprise right out the gate.
Zattoo seems to be a more promising overall package, IMO. Too bad its not available in the US yet.
The quality on Hulu is “OK”, but the quality on FOX’s own web site is fantastic. ABC’s is fantastic too. NBC, CBS and CW (and hulu) all have inferior quality that’s as good as Hulu’s, which is..inferior. Granted, the network sites don’t have the extensive library of shows Hulu offers.
I hope, “not great quality, but good enough and way better than YouTube” does not become the defacto standard for Internet Video Quality.
But regardless, as others have mentioned if Hulu winds up the only place online to easily (and legally) stream Battlestar Galactica, Stargate Atlantis etc, it will be a big destination.
@ #12
You are dead on. I was thinking the same thing. It is laughable how many times techcrunch has declared google dipping its toe into any space as automatically killing whatever competitor they have. Duncan has bizarrely declared that google “dominates” all its vertical markets and mike was just sure the ridiculously tepid relaunch of jotspot was ready to take down sharepoint! The funniest thing though is goog’s all but in house hype machine calling foul on other over hyped products. Good times.
Mike, I think you’d do well to separate everything that happened at Hulu before they hired an external CEO in July and after. Seems to me that most of your criticisms are from the “before” period, and that since then you and others at TechCrunch have been fairly positive in terms of their execution. Other than your issues with the Fortune piece–a piece I bet you would support pretty strongly for any start-up you happened to have invested in.
-PJ
Erik - I am biased. I am self interested. please point me to someone who isn’t.
It seems that quite a few of anon comments above are from hulu parties. Those comments made me feel I’m the only one who never used Hulu.
PJ - interesting comment until the end. I was generally positive on hulu, except fo the ops problems they’re having. Until i read that post. part of the frustration is that I get how the PR stuff works, and what Hulu pulled is b.s.
Jim - yes, i know this blog well enough to know when comments are being planted. it’s also clear from the IP addresses that at least a third of the negative comments, all anonymous, are likely from hulu.
i don’t know much of the back story but i really enjoyed the user ex and zoned out to all of arrested development and then all of Benson [<3] weird enough & warning do not get trapped into the knight rider movie’ arg!!!
PR flacks and internet buzz sometimes make the world go round. Of course Quarterlife had a lot of Internet buzz and wound up being the least watched non-repeat scripted primetime programming in the history of NBC. It will live on via Bravo and Hulu, where even fewer people will watch it.
The Knight Rider movie did great in the ratings Philip and c’mon, you have to love Val Kilmer as the voice of KIT!
The Knight Rider movie was…terrible. not sure why i watched it actually, but i did. It was like an accident scene, I couldn’t look away.
“Michael Arrington
March 8th, 2008 at 7:21 am
other - you’re right. ”
YES! That’s going on my resume! lol.
That said, I hope you aren’t indicating that hulu has some sort of a business responsibility to compete with illegal torrents for tv shows. They are a company which wants to make money - right now that means focusing on the US market and the relative ease that it affords them in creating video-for-use-online and localized advertising contracts.
Just because there are torrent sites, etc. which let you get tv shows outside of the US (illegally in some places), doesn’t mean that you also have some sort of a right to demand that Hulu offer you those same videos at the cost of their bandwidth for no charge (either monetary or through ad views).
Hulu is totally awesome. From a users perpective, why would I care about the expectations that were set several months ago? All I want is a free, easy-to-use, LEGAL way to watch high-quality video online. Hulu nailed it. As they get more content they will become the a central web destination.
We will always have YouTube for grainy (but funny) home videos and Hulu for professionally produced videos. Go hulu!!!
Michael,
I am not entirely sure that everything about Hulu is hype. While I do agree that it lacks features (See: http://asvideoproductions.com/.....w-hulucom/), it is certainly getting better.
For example:
1. They have ads for a majority of their content, something that has been difficult to achieve in the online video space.
2. They have pertinent discussions regarding each content, allowing users to interact.
3. They have non-mainstream content, such as interviews, behind-the-scenes, etc.
4. They’re growing! In the past, users have had to jump around to various networks’ websites in order to view main stream content. However, Hulu provides most of that and more in a simple & easy to use interface.
Now, it has it’s share of problems as well, such as limited video quality and very, very limited sharing features, but, it’s just a matter of time before those things start rolling out.
- Aanarav
Michael: I am sure why I watched that lousy movie — it wasn’t for the nostalgia, it was curiosity about seeing that ~13 million watched it. When it aired on 2/17 the only thing that could beat it is Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, which is a huge hit for ABC. Most interesting to me was that viewers didn’t bleed out after watching for 15 minutes – it kept adding viewers as the night wore on. I don’t get it either, really, I’d prefer a Baywatch comeback, but that’s just me
I’ll be surprised if NBC doesn’t make Knight Rider into a series, or at least do another movie or two.
Mike a bit redundant in the first sentence “If yesterday’s cushy Fortune article on Hulu in Fortune is any indication”…
other - pretending that bittorrent is something that Hulu doesn’t need to think about is like pretending that we’re winning the drug war.
For the record, this blog has been criticizing copyright law and those who use it to defend their businesses since the beginning. Not sure where all these new readers are coming from that abhor bittorrent and think the content producers are treated unfairly, but you are not regular readers. And, really, learn about open proxies when you comment spam on behalf of your company.
Hulu does not buffer videos so when you have limited bandwidth it is basically unwatchable. Youtube is getting better every year; they should have pooled their resources, sucked up their billion dollar pride and worked with Google.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that they should be ignorant of them, I meant to say that they are not a business competitor. It’s like iTunes coming in AFTER napster and ilk had been around and created a model for free songs - iTunes just had to work on making selling the same thing appealing. They pulled it off. Hulu has to do the same thing - they DON’T need to waste time and money appealing to international customers who *expect* access. That will come down the road when they have established that their business model is sustainable. I’m trying to clarify that the reason they aren’t going international now is because it’s not “worth it” to them, not because they don’t like international customers or are intentionally blocking them out or something. People seem to be taking offense/discounting the product because Hulu is not accessible from their country. If they’d take two seconds to think about why, it’s fairly straightforward.
goddamit Arrington, you KNOW I don’t work for hulu - I’ve been spamming your comments section with my brilliant insights since before Hulu was a twinkle in NBC’s eye.
The fact that so many Hulu employees are commenting here does point to its imminent official launch.
Curiously, all Hulu shows can be watched on AOL, MSN, MySpace TV and Veoh for some time without the need to participate in the beta testing, I wonder what the fuss is about?