A lot has been made of recent reports that online video site Hulu is close to YouTube in revenues and is expected to match them next year. I wouldn't be so quick to start praising Hulu. The company has made its mark by signing deals with traditional media to run television content online, and (apparently) has distribution agreements with blog sites, such as Gawker. So fine. But views outside the United States continue to see error messages instead of video in Hulu screens, which means that the problem of distribution is far from solved. And is segmenting the internet into closed national viewing areas a good strategy in the long run? Of course not. Hulu's business model is based on closed content - but you can't sustain a closed content model, not in the long run, not once the momentum from free viewing has dried up.
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