Months after the October
announcement that Hulu was launching its beta version on their official site,
as well as partner sites, such as AOL, Comcast’s Fancast.com, MySpace and
Yahoo!, Hulu decided to go public starting Wednesday; there is a trick however:
it is still limited to U.S. users only for now.
In an attempt to bring the best
selection of premium video content online, Hulu announced deals with
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. and Sony Pictures Television, as well as World
Wrestling Entertainment, Smithsonian Networks, the National Basketball league
Association and the National Hockey league.
“We’re excited to bring a wide
selection of popular content to fans, on-demand and free – from full episodes
and clips of hit shows like Heroes, House, The Office and The Simpsons, to
feature films like The Blues Brothers and Sideways,” said Jason Kilar, chief
executive officer at Hulu, after announcing the beta release.
In the four months since it’s
been “on”, Hulu managed to conquer all classes of users, by covering a large
area of content, from full-length old and new TV shows, to sport videos and
movies. Big challenge for Google YouTube? It remains to be seen how big of a
challenge, now that it is finally becoming available to users all around the United
States.
Another thing Hulu is counting
on is the ads feature, aiming at both advertisers and viewers, by offering the
option to choose to watch more ads from the advertisers on the site: “From the advertisers
perspective, it can’t get any better,” Forrester Research analyst James
McQuivey said, as quoted by Reuters.
Hulu is an online video service set
to offer its users a ‘premium’ selection of hit shows, clips, movies and
sports, with a content provided by NBC, FOX, MGM, Sony Pictures Television,
Access Hollywood, Bravo, E! Entertainment television, Fox Reality,
Gamespot.com, National Geographic, World Wrestling Entertainment and many
others.