We’ve known for a while about the joint video venture between
News Corporation
and NBC Universal.
This coupling
had earned a valuation of $1 billion, even though it had yet to be
named since it was announced in March.
Well, now a decision has been
reached. In news that is well overdue, NBC and News Corp.
have now announced an official name for their joint venture.
Hulu
It’s four letters that took
five months to create. It sounds a little funny, but I think that the
goal was a short, easy-to-remember name.
Not, only does it have a name, but Hulu also now has a website, which is
complete with the ability to sign up for an invite to the private beta
(yes, they will be starting off Joost style).
There’s also a terms of use
page and a privacy
policy. The beta will now be launching in October, one month
behind schedule.
“In the interest of delivering a great customer experience and
making sure that we can address any feedback that comes along the way,
we’re going to start small and grow iteratively in terms of the volumes
of people that we invite to participate in the beta,” stated Hulu CEO,
Jason Kilar.
Now that the “hard part” is out of the way, maybe there will
be more
to report about this project than the flaws that have been made so far,
and the fact that they are well behind the competition.
Judging from the homepage (screenshot above), there will be a
variety of shows available, both from FOX
and NBC. Among
these will be 24,
Bones, Are You Smarter
Than A 5th Grader?, Heroes,
and many others.
Also, Hulu plans to introduce programming through
distribution partner sites such as AOL,
Comcast
(possibly through FanCast?),
MSN, MySpace, and Yahoo.
As for the odd name, Hulu CEO Jason Kilar had this to say:
Why Hulu? 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.Our hope is that Hulu will embody our
(admittedly ambitious) never-ending mission, which is to help you find
and enjoy the world’s premier content when, where and how you want it.
Maybe it just took some financial
inspiration
for these guys to get into gear and provide more than just promises.
Whatever the deal is, I will be waiting until October to see if Hulu is
any good.
Michael Garrett is a contributing author discussing the social networking world, his work can be found on Profy.com
