Is Hulu putting up a pay wall around its Web TV site? Nope.
Does Hulu want to charge people to watch Web TV? Yes.
Confused? Don’t be.
Here’s the explanation about what’s going on at the premium online video site.
Three years after the Google deal, YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley explains some of the cryptic language in the clip that defined the Web 2.0 era. Also, he’d like you to know his site is generating more than a billion views a day.
Want to learn how to steal your favorite movie or TV show? A 10-minute video starring a Paramount executive offers detailed instructions.
There 85,000 apps available. So how do you get Apple to highlight yours in national TV ads?
When Apple added a video camera to the iPhone last summer, the digerati declared that Flip, Cisco’s cheap digital video camera line, was dead. When Apple added a video camera to its cheap and tiny Nano iPod last week, the digerati heaped dirt on the camcorder’s grave.
You know what? I think the conventional wisdom is right on this one. Take a look at this clever side-by-side test.
Does Google need a Hollywood guide? It may be getting one: Jim Wiatt, the former head of the fabled William Morris talent agency, has been talking to the company about a consulting gig for its YouTube video site.
Wiatt, who is leaving his old job in the aftermath of his agency’s highly contentious merger with the Endeavor agency, discussed the idea with Google and YouTube executives in Mountain View last week, multiple sources said.
In order to move from money pit to profit center, YouTube has to spend less, which is hard for the site to talk about. And it needs to sell more ads on more videos–which YouTube is happy to talk about. Hence, yesterday’s news that YouTube would start selling against “viral videos.”
Another feather for the “we’ve got real stuff” cap that YouTube is showing off these days: Google’s video site has hammered out a deal with Time Warner to show clips from the media conglomerate’s cable networks, TV shows and movies. But you won’t be seeing full-length shows or movies from Time Warner on the world’s biggest video site–it’s saving those for cable companies that play along with its “TV Everywhere” plan.
Remember how the rascals at file-sharing site The Pirate Bay, chastened by the Swedish courts, were going to straighten up and go legit? Going to have to keep waiting on that one. Here’s the latest reminder: Yet another thumb in the eye to the big music labels.
Got a couple hours to kill? Want to enjoy a pleasant blast from the past? Head over to YouTube and check out “Ghostbusters,” which is running at its full length on Google’s video site and is prominently displayed on its homepage. YouTube’s not-so-subtle message: We’re more than just skateboarding cat videos!
Web video companies that wanted to take on YouTube are having a very hard time. But Web video isn’t going away, either, and there has to be some way to make it work for users, publishers and investors. Right?
Hence, another round of funding for 5min, a video start-up that just raised a $7.5 million B round. New investor Globespan Capital Partners led the round, and Spark Capital, the VC shop that has made several video bets (along with a big one in Twitter) made a second investment.
Buy an e-book for Amazon’s Kindle recently? You might want to check to see if it’s still on your device. Kindle users are complaining that the e-commerce giant has removed titles from their machines this week and given them refunds in their place.
What happened? The details are fuzzy, but apparently, a publisher that supplied Amazon with two George Orwell titles has decided that it doesn’t want to sell them via Amazon anymore. So away they went. Have at it, DRM-haters.
Videogame players are spending more time playing videogames than ever. But that won’t do the videogame business much good unless those players actually start buying new games again.
Even as the rest of the retail world stumbled in the past year, Amazon kept cruising and increasing market share. So if a cratering economy can’t hurt the e-commerce giant, what could? Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney throws out a suggestion: Movies, books and music–the same stuff that helped Amazon get the lead it enjoys today.
Here’s Google’s sort-of answer to Hulu: A newly designed page to showcase TV shows and movies, along with new players and a new ad strategy. What’s not included: almost any first-run TV show or newly released movie. That’s the content that’s made Hulu successful and what’s also driven traffic to offerings from CBS and Disney’s ABC. You can’t accuse the Google guys of overselling this: In a press conference today, they described it as a “first step, a baby step.”
Peter Kafka has been covering media and technology since 1997, when he joined the staff of Forbes magazine. Most recently, he has been the managing editor of the tech and media Web site, Silicon Alley Insider. Read more »
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