Hulu, the video network that was created as a partnership between FOX, NBC, and other video studios has add a channel listing to better sort the 900 TV and movies hosted on their site.  Channels include action/adventure, anime, sci-fi, home and garden, comedy, video games, etc.  Hulu will also be powering video recommendations and user forums built around their social network.  These features have arrived shortly after Joost announced that they are taking their video platform to the web.

IMDb recently started using Hulu to power the video section of their website too.  Hulu aims to find more filtered advertisers for specific channels.  For example, in the food and leisure section, Hulu is currently sponsored by Splenda.  Hulu receives about 100 million monthly video streams.  What I would like to see is more full movies added into Hulu’s collection.  In a way, Hulu is also directly competing against sites that host full movies illegally like AllUC.org. 

Hulu has an amazing user interface and the video quality on Hulu reigns supreme too.  But until they add more video content, users will stop by and watch a few episodes and not return until new clips are added.  What I’m finding is that Joost has more interesting content. 

Every weekday between today and mid-August, Hulu will be streaming a new movie, documentary, or sci-fi film.  The calendar of the films is available at: http://www.hulu.com/summer.  Here’s the catch: you won’t know what is playing until the day of.  While this is an annoying feature, I’m sure it’ll keep users coming back to Hulu out of curiosity.

Hulu’s first movie of the event is Lost in Translation starring Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray.  The movie is about a man that comes to Tokyo to film a whiskey commercial bonding with a woman that he would most likely not find himself getting along with.

Hulu Days of Summer has a widget too.  The widget can be embedded in blog posts, social networks, etc.  The widget can be seen below.

Hulu is a video website created through a partnership between NBC and FOX.  Hulu directly competes with Google’s YouTube.

Hulu is proving more and more everyday that they are not Clown Co. Hulu has just made a solid move for catering to those that prefer having RSS aggregation websites as their browser homepage.

Now Hulu has a way to add RSS feeds for several categories of videos on their site including: Recently Added Videos, Recently Added Shows, Highest Rated Videos, Most Popular Videos, Most Popular Videos This Week, Most Popular Videos This Month, Most Popular Videos All Time, Soon-To-Expire Videos.  Personally I’m going to take every one of these RSS feeds and add them to a separate tab on my current homepage, Netvibes.

There is also an Add Video check box that allows Hulu to embed the video within the RSS feed aggregation box.  This feature is not quite supported yet, but I’m sure it’s a work-in-progress.

What makes these RSS feeds interesting is that Feedburner powers them.  Feedburner is owned by Google and Google owns YouTube, a Hulu competitor. Oh, the irony.  No matter what you do on the web, it somehow connects to Google in some sort of degree.  Just like all of us are six degrees from Kevin Bacon, every Google competitor is 2 degrees away from Google.

Another interesting feature of Hulu is the ability to embed videos into social networks.  This will surely drive additional hits to Hulu.  Hulu is currently ranked 3,000 or so on Alexa and growing.  Below is a screen shot of Hulu in my Netvibes.

Great feature, keep it up Hulu team.

Hulu’s content is provided by Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX) through NBC and warner Bros., General Electric Company (NYSE:GE) through NBC, MGM Mirage (NYSE:MGM), Sony Corporation (NYSE:SNE), and Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. (NYSE:LGF),

If the rumor about what the Google executives previously dubbed NBC and News Corp.’s idea for Hulu is true, I see them as being completely hypocritical. Around March 2007, rumors were afloat that News Corp. and NBC were parterning to develop a YouTube competitor and Google executives were supposedly not worried about it because they were reportedly nicknaming the company that didn’t exist at the time as ClownCo. Today that company is named Hulu and they have impressed the hell out of several media bloggers including Pulse 2.0, TechCrunch, and GigaOM. Mashable seemed to have a more undecided opinion about how Hulu will perform in the market.

The reason why Google would give such a nickname to the company is because of the number of players involved. Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo!, MySpace, FOX, NBC, and News Corp. were all involved somehow as partners of the company in some shape or form. But the reason why I am calling Google hypocritical is that they seem to be pulling the same trick: partnering with a large number of companies to try and one-up a company that they cannot stand to see score a good deal for themselves. Microsoft’s investment in Facebook is what I’m referring to specifically.

I am making a bold statement by calling Google execs a hypocrite, but I have to admit that I was partially influenced by the article title on today’s New York Times: Google and Friends to Gang Up on Facebook. And when hearing Google and Friends Ganging Up on Facebook, I think of a $220 billion search monopoly picking on a 23 year old with a good idea. Shame on you: Schmidt, Brin, and Page. You guys should just take some money out of the bank and take a bath in it or buy more Boeings.

Who is Google allying with? Other social networks of course. These social networks include:
1.) LinkedIn
2.) hi5
3.) Friendster
4.) Plaxo
5.) Ning

Other companies involved in Google OpenSocial include Oracle and Salesforce.com. Just for the record, Michael Arrington of TechCrunch also mentioned that the only image associated with OpenSocial is a horny Elmer’s glue thing. As funny as that comment was, I agree that there is something highly wrong with this image.

All opinions aside, do I expect OpenSocial to really take off? I think developers will explore the prospects of OpenSocial, but won’t be as receptive to developing applications for Google’s partners. This is because Facebook’s core users are college students and young, urban professionals that are still receptive to adding applications that make networking more “fun.” And the social networks that Google has partnered with are losing their edge. As a recently graduated college student myself, I have personally left Friendster years ago and never looked back.

I think Google is an amazing service and will not sway from using their search engine unless something amazing comes along, but I think OpenSocial seems too much like a product created out of a grudge. And that doesn’t go along with their “Don’t be Evil” philosophy. When Facebook Applications were released, they were promoted as a way for developers to explore the creative senses while leveraging Facebook’s user base.

“Consumers are clearly interested in easily accessing a broad spectrum of programming,”
-Peter Chernin, President and COO of News Corp.

NBC Universal and News Corporation, parent company of FOX, have proved the nay-sayers wrong with their new venture, Hulu.  Bloggers, news publications, and YouTube fans all had a lot of doubt about whether an NBC/News Corp. partnership would be able to take on video user-generated content web sites.  Since NBC and FOX wasn’t happy with sponsored groups on YouTube, it comes to no surprise that full episodes of NBC- and FOX- owned shows are placed on Hulu.  I think it was also a smart move that FOX shows were not placed on MySpace, News Corp.’s own social network.

Even though Hulu is still in Beta testing, some of their clips are available on MSN and on AOL.  The videos that are available by Hulu on AOL and MSN are of high quality so that should be a reason for future Hulu users to be optimistic about the future of video content.  How will NBC and News Corp. make money from Hulu?  Advertising most likely.

What are the pros and cons of Hulu?  The pros are that more time will be spent on Hulu because the quality of the content is much higher than YouTube.  The cons is that YouTube was made for people that wanted that quick snapshot of entertainment.  Let’s say that I wanted to show a buddy of mine a 15 second clip of Family Guy, Hulu would not be the ideal place to do so.  There are a lot of funny one-liners on FOX and NBC shows.  But Hulu does not offer that convenience.  And that will be Hulu’s one weakness.