The big news this morning was that Netflix has decided to split into two – Netflix will remain for the streaming business and a new site, Qwikster, will host the dvd-by-mail offering. Seems like the stock market didn’t love the move – Netflix shares dropped 7% today.

Yesterday I wrote about HTC wrapping a subway train in NYC with ads for their new tablet that allows you to use a stylus to create content.

Today I am back with another interesting advertising option for HTC. They have partnered with Hulu to offer a free trial month of the Hulu Plus service. If you go through the normal Hulu website, you are offered a free trial week of Hulu Plus but if you use this special link, you can use Hulu Plus free for a month. HTC is promoting the HTC Thunderbolt which runs on the Verizon network. From what I can gather, you don’t need an Android device to take advantage of this free trial.

While I am guessing that HTC is paying something to Hulu for this promotion, it certainly is interesting that they picked today to launch the program. Hulu Plus appears to run on many of the same devices that Netflix offers for their streaming service.

I haven’t tried Hulu Plus yet but do find it a bit odd that they charge $7.99/month for the service and yet they still show some advertising within the programming.

Find more stories about: Hulu, netflix, Qwikster, video on demand

Online video service Hulu has announced that today they are rolling out a new video player. The company has also provided an update on their usage of HTML 5. Hulu product VP, Eugene Wei, noted regarding HTML 5, “We continue to monitor developments on HTML5, but as of now it doesn’t yet meet all of our customers’ needs. Our player doesn’t just simply stream video, it must also secure the content, handle reporting for our advertisers, render the video using a high performance codec to ensure premium visual quality, communicate back with the server to determine how long to buffer and what bitrate to stream, and dozens of other things that aren’t necessarily visible to the end user. Not all video sites have these needs, but for our business these are all important and often contractual requirements.”

As for the new player, there are too many changes to go into here but suffice to say they are worth checking out on the Hulu blog. The new video player is written in Actionscript 3 and allows for adaptive bitstrate streaming. There are some new closed captioning improvements along with a visual seek bar which is VERY cool. The seek bar allows you to see a thumbnail of the content you want to move forward or backwards to. The video player is also 25% larger than the previous player.

Hulu also provided some advertising updates related to the player. The new Ad Tailor allows you to tell Hulu if an ad is relevant to you. At various times they will also run surveys related to advertising in place of ads. Wei notes, “The more efficiently we can match ads up with users, the more everyone benefits. Users see more relevant ads, and advertisers reach a more targeted and receptive audience.”  If an ad is delivered via the Ad Tailor, it comes with starch and on a hanger. Just kidding…the ad will display a note that the Ad Tailor selected this advertisement for you.

Amazing to see how far Hulu has come in such a short time-frame. It was just a short while ago, many bloggers wrote the service off before it even launched.

Find more stories about: Hulu, online video, TV, Video

Yesterday we took a look at how Kodak is welcoming in the new year using their video wall in Times Square. If you aren’t planning on going out into the snow tonight or are located in another city, you can still watch the ball drop to 2010 tonight in Times Square.

Hulu and Livestream have you covered with New Year’s related content from around the U.S. Hulu notes, “from approximately 10 p.m. EST to 12:15 a.m. EST, we’ll be hosting a live stream direct from Times Square as the crowd counts down to the ball drop at midnight.” It looks like Hulu will provide the same coverage they did for the welcome to 2009.

Livestream will show a variety of programming beginning at 6pm Eastern tonight from around the country. They note that you can even watch the “littlest ball drop” which is located in Aggieville, Kansas. Livestream’s coverage is also available on the iPhone.

How will you ring in 2010? Leave your geeky or non-geeky suggestions in the comments.

Find more stories about: Hulu, livestream, Mogulus, New Years Eve, NYC

Back in December, comScore reported that online video site Hulu reached 235 million streams which moved them into 6th place on the top 10 online video streams list. Today comScore released their latest videos viewed list for March 2009 and Hulu has moved up to the 3rd spot with 380 million videos.

This puts Hulu right behind Google/YouTube and Fox Interactive and moves Hulu above Yahoo, Microsoft and Viacom. To put the 380 million mark in perspective, Google including YouTube videos were viewed over 5 billion times.

comScore is also reporting that for the month of March, Google/YouTube passed 100 million unique viewers. Hulu came in with 41 million viewers which puts the online video service in the 4th slot.

Other notes from comScore include: 77.8 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video and the average video length was just over 3 minutes.

Do you find yourself watching a lot of videos on Hulu? To be honest I’ve only used the service when I have missed a TV show that they offer (e.g. Lost, Chuck, etc.).

Find more stories about: comScore, Hulu, online video, YouTube

This looks like it’s going to go ten rounds people. First Boxee runs Hulu content. Then Hulu blocks Boxee. This morning Boxee launched a work-around based on RSS feeds. Now Boxee has told their users that Hulu is blocking the Boxee browser. So for now once again, it’s no Hulu content on Boxee.

Boxee co-founder Avner Ronen notes on the Boxee blog:

we just found out that Hulu blocked the boxee browser from accessing the Hulu site. this is a disappointing development since their RSS feeds are publicly available, and our browser, while optimized for a great 10 ft video experience, is no different in how it accesses this content than Internet Explorer, Firefox, Flock, Opera or any of the other browsers out there.

Boxee is down but not out – let’s see what they do next!

Update: Greg Sandoval at CBS was able to track down a Boxee employee and has some quotes regarding the service interruption.

Find more stories about: Boxee, Hulu, online video, Quick News

Last month video network Hulu requested that media center Boxee remove all of the Hulu video streams. Today NY-based Boxee is announcing that they have been able to partially figure out a way around the ban/block by utilizing RSS feeds. If you download the latest Boxee release, you can import media RSS feeds which can include sources Google Video, Yahoo!, YouTube and also Hulu public feeds. Apparently it’s not as sexy as the former integration but it will get you by. You can also import media RSS feeds from any website.

Boxee staff does note that today’s release hasn’t gone through much testing so don’t moan if it turns your mac into a pc.

Boxee is also launching an "App Box" which allows for easy installation of new applications. They note that there’s also native support for 3rd party repositories so developers can send out apps without having to go through the main Boxee app library. I wonder if this is one of the ways Boxee will monetize…by charging for featuring certain apps.

Check out my video interview with Boxee co-founder Avner Ronen.

Find more stories about: Boxee, Hulu, nextNY, NYC, online video, Quick News

Can’t make it to Times Square this year for the New Year’s Eve bash? Don’t want to go out in what looks to be a freezing cold, blustery night? Would you rather ring in the new year on Friendfeed or Twitter? I’ve got two words for you: Mogulus and Hulu.

NY-based online video streaming provider Mogulus has setup a New Year’s Eve Times Square channel which will be live from 4pm ET tonight. They have partnered with some of the Gannett properties which will run the feed on their newspaper websites as well.

Hulu will run a live channel from Times Square beginning at 10pm ET. Hulu notes that their coverage, “will include views of Times Square and the crystal ball, plus the ambient sounds of the party as NYC winds up to count down to 2009.”

UPDATE: Check out 2010 New Year’s eve video options

Happy New Year to all of the awesome CN readers. Please be safe! 2009 looks to be a very exciting year!

Find more stories about: 2008, 2009, Hulu, Mogulus, NYC, online video, Quick News

SplashCast and Hulu have announced a new partnership today that will bring shows from Hulu into SplashCast widget video players. Basically what the partnership does is allow a person to embed a "channel" into their Facebook and MySpace profiles along with blogs which will continue to import the latest episodes and content. This keeps the content more current than an individual Hulu embed.

From the release, "The SplashCast player includes full episodes and clips from various seasons of each show, as well as interviews with the show’s characters, producers, and more. Fans can even upload their own humorous photos and videos for all to see, as well as view, rate and comment on photos and videos submitted by others."

SplashCast will sell ads into the embedded players. I wonder what that experience will be like to interact with advertising in the player and then interact with advertising in the actual Hulu videos and clips.

Last month SplashCast partnered with 70 radio station websites.

Find more stories about: Hulu, online video, Quick News, SplashCast

comScore is out with their latest U.S. online video report today. Back in May comScore listed Hulu for the first top in the top 10 with 88 million videos viewed. Today Hulu has moved up in comScore’s online video report for October to sixth position with 235 million videos viewed. Pretty amazing growth for a service some called crap before Hulu actually launched.

Other notable facts from the report:

• YouTube passed the 100 million U.S. visitor mark for the month of October
• ESPN listed in tenth position for views – I wonder how many of those views come from their auto-launcher on the espn.com home page (hate that feature)
• All of Google’s video sites pushed out more than 5.3 billion video views for October

Find more stories about: comScore, Hulu, online video, Quick News, YouTube

Video hosting provider Hulu has announced a distribution partnership with the Food Network today. Actually the deal is with Scripps Networks who owns Food Network and will also include clips from Fine Living, HGTV and DIY. The initial batch of clips range from 2-4 minutes and most carry a 30-second pre-roll video ad. That’s some ratio of content to ad!

I actually had the opportunity to spend a week at the Food Network studios about two years ago. It’s amazing the talent that they have – from the stars in front of the camera to the massive work behind the camera. If you think it’s hard to get a movie star to do what the producer wants, just imagine what it’s like to keep a cake in perfect condition for an hour under the studio lights. The food is very pampered!

I am not sure if these Scripps Networks clips can be viewed worldwide but if they can, it would be an excellent way for Scripps to draw in a brand new set of viewers.

Check out my post about Food Network star Giada DeLaurentiis and what she can teach you about passion-centric communities.

Here’s a sample of the Food Network clips on Hulu:

Find more stories about: food, Hulu, online video, Quick News, TV, Video

Last night we wrote about the new set of embeddable widgets that video streaming service Hulu has launched. It sure seems like the widgets load very slowly. While watching the widget load, I noticed that they are grabbing data and pushing it to Omniture’s tracking beacon. This is the same beacon we wrote about with regards to Adobe and their potential spyware.

There’s nothing in the Hulu privacy policy regarding the widgets and any sort of tracking. There’s also no notice of tracking on the Hulu widget page. Should there be? And more importantly, should I as the person embedding the widgets understand what it is that Hulu is tracking? Trust me, I am a tracking freak so I understand the need for Hulu to understand how and where their widgets are being used. But I’d also like to see some transparency regarding what it is that they are tracking. How can I be assured that they aren’t tracking items outside of their widget? What information isbeing passed back to Hulu from my site and more importantly, my site visitors.

I’d like to see Hulu create a checkbox that the person lifting the widget has agreed to the terms of the widget which must include what it is that Hulu is tracking.

This is a simple example of a topic which will need to be discussed as an industry at some point in the very near future. Are all widgets considered a form of advertising and ad-based rules apply? When I embed a widget on my site, what responsibilities do I and the widget source have in communicating privacy and terms with regards to the widget(s)?

Find more stories about: Hulu, Insights, online video, Video, widgets

NewTeeVee and Techcrunch are reporting tonight on the launch of a set of embeddable widgets from Hulu. Hulu CTO Eric Feng and Techcrunch editor Michael Arrington sat down at the Techcrunch house for an interview. During the interview, Feng discusses the launch of a set of embeddable widgets. I have enjoyed using the Hulu service since their launch – it’s also growing quite well in terms of traffic and video views.

I’ve written about widgets before, spoken on panels about widgets and believe that widgets will change the advertising landscape over the next year or so. From my perspective, the Hulu widgets provide little to no real value and I don’t see why a content publisher (blog, MySpace profile, whatever) would embed these widgets.

The "Hulu’s Show & Movie Widget" which I’ve embedded below forces a user away from the content site to Hulu to watch the video. It’s a bit odd considering they allow embedding the shows online and how Feng talks about hyper distribution as the model Hulu is striving for. I’d prefer to see the ability to view the video directly inside or that the widget expands to view the show. If Hulu could provide this type of widget, it would be a real winner for Hulu, the video viewer and the content site owner. If you take their full, non-customizable widget, it will play the video inside the widget. But anyone who will want to embed a Hulu widget into their site or blog, will want their favorite or related shows in the embed (like Michael did with the DailyShow).

On the flip side, this is a great marketing play – if they can get users to embed the widgets, the users will provide Hulu with all the free marketing they could ever want – even while providing no value to the site that embeds the widget. Feng says Hulu is open to feedback on the widgets – so there’s my feedback – make all of the widgets play inside of the widget for maximum effectiveness.

Find more stories about: Hulu, online video, Quick News, Video, widgets

comScore is out with their May online video report. No surprise here, Google still leads the pack with 35% market share. Google’s YouTube property accounts for 98% of the Google video traffic. Fox Interactive, Yahoo, Microsoft and Viacom round out the top 5. The full list is below. Surprisingly Hulu has joined the top 10 with 88 million videos viewed.

Here are the other notes from comScore for May 2008:

• 74 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
• The average online video viewer watched 228 minutes of video.
• 82.2 million viewers watched 4.1 billion videos on YouTube.com (50.4 videos per viewer).
• 54.8 million viewers watched 703 million videos on MySpace.com (12.8 videos per viewer).
• 6.8 million viewers watched 88 million videos on Hulu.com (13.0 videos per viewer).
• The duration of the average online video was 2.7 minutes.

YouTube will always come in with a higher video/user count because most of their videos are short, user-generated and are typically unplanned while sites like Hulu are longer shows and are typically planned.

Ashkan says more videos were watched than searches were performed.

Find more stories about: comScore, Hulu, Quick News, Video, YouTube

This week at the NY Video 2.0 meeting, a variety of companies either demo’ed their service or provided a variety of business updates. If you are in the NYC tech or media scene, this might be the best monthly meetup to attend.

Here are the presenters:

1. Hulu – Kevin McGurn, VP National Sales (our coverage) — Michael has an article today about Hulu’s ad rates
2. Move Networks – Bob Bryson, SVP Sales & BD
3. Boxee – Avner Ronen, Co-founder & CEO
4. MediaMerx – Tejpaul Bhatia, Co-founder & CEO
5. Visible Measures – Matt Cutler, VP Marketing & Analytics (our coverage)

If you want to jump around in the video, click play, then pause and wait for the loading bar to finish, then you can jump, jump around.

Find more stories about: Conferences, Hulu, NY Video Meetup, NYC, Visible Measures

This afternoon Hulu CEO Jason Kilar appeared on Fox Business to discuss the public release of the Hulu online video/TV service. I’ve captured a video from the brief discussion and it’s embedded below. Here is a transcript of the important parts (my emphasis):

"Already the business model is proving itself, which is we support the service through advertising and there’s a strong enough demand that we are actually getting higher rates than on broadcast, specifically even in primetime tv…advertising is sold on a CPM basis and we are very fortunate to be in a position that the advertising bought on Hulu is even higher than that on primetime."

"The common thread between the two is that Amazon is one of the best companies in the world at focusing on the user experience. And that’s exactly what Hulu is, in obsessed as well. That’s what gets us out of bed in the morning, why we show up to work and often times stay until 3 AM in the morning."

Perhaps Kilar has been reading the also LA-based Calacanis Employee Manual.

Find more stories about: Fox Business, Hulu, Insights, online video, TV