Whois Hulu???
I just discovered a site called Hulu, and it is one of the most impressive things I have seen this year. It is a site that offers video content for free. It is a joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp. (owner of FOX). The assumption is that the business itself is currently worth $1 billion. However, at first I could not understand how it intends to make money.
Getting site traffic is always a precursor in being able to generate funds from a site. This site will have no problem generating traffic. Some sort of advertising would need to be introduced. I then learned that the TV shows have commercials, thus implying that this is the main source of revenue. Is this the beginning of a new age television? On Demand programming... anywhere?
It seems a little too good to be true. I began to think of the business implications of this. Recently, Apple and NBC could not come to terms on content pricing (as I understand it). NBC withdrew all its content from the iTunes store. This now looks to be NBC's way of delivering content, and capitalizing on its content - through traditional advertising, instead of charging for the content. Very interesting concept. I honestly did not expect it from them. GE (NBC's parent company) had this in the works a long time ago, as I recall an interview with Jeff Immelt (GE CEO) on Charlie Rose about how he believes content delivery needs to change for today's world. I think this was a step in the right direction.
On to more important matters.... I am the owner of an iPhone. I think this is a defensive play against Apple's road to media dominance. Apple was capitalizing on media that it doesn't produce. The media producers should capitalize on their media... and I think this is where Hulu comes from, and why NBC pulled from the iTunes store. What worries me is that this is going to end up being incompatible with Apple products - when this is exactly what the iPhone needs to have. I believe Hulu was developed to have Apple need them (GE and FOX), instead of the other way around. Very interesting, but still, the iPhone needs to be able to use Hulu.
These need to come together...
~JL
Getting site traffic is always a precursor in being able to generate funds from a site. This site will have no problem generating traffic. Some sort of advertising would need to be introduced. I then learned that the TV shows have commercials, thus implying that this is the main source of revenue. Is this the beginning of a new age television? On Demand programming... anywhere?
It seems a little too good to be true. I began to think of the business implications of this. Recently, Apple and NBC could not come to terms on content pricing (as I understand it). NBC withdrew all its content from the iTunes store. This now looks to be NBC's way of delivering content, and capitalizing on its content - through traditional advertising, instead of charging for the content. Very interesting concept. I honestly did not expect it from them. GE (NBC's parent company) had this in the works a long time ago, as I recall an interview with Jeff Immelt (GE CEO) on Charlie Rose about how he believes content delivery needs to change for today's world. I think this was a step in the right direction.
On to more important matters.... I am the owner of an iPhone. I think this is a defensive play against Apple's road to media dominance. Apple was capitalizing on media that it doesn't produce. The media producers should capitalize on their media... and I think this is where Hulu comes from, and why NBC pulled from the iTunes store. What worries me is that this is going to end up being incompatible with Apple products - when this is exactly what the iPhone needs to have. I believe Hulu was developed to have Apple need them (GE and FOX), instead of the other way around. Very interesting, but still, the iPhone needs to be able to use Hulu.
These need to come together...
~JL
posted by JC at 10:36 PM
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