Hulu is kicking Youtube's Ass | Hacker News Reader

Hulu is kicking Youtube's Ass

blogmaverick.com

31 pointsjohns38 comments

The YouTube acquisition wasn't just about buying a streaming video company. It's not about losing money on every sale and making it up in volume. The YouTube acquisition was about getting Google's engineers a huge dataset of video to start running search on. Google's all about trying to do things with huge datasets.

That and plus to make sure Youtube doesn't ever lose the safe harbor context argument to create the legal precedent that may unsettle quite a few things on the world wide web.

You don't spend $1.65 billion on a dataset. You spend it on eyeballs.

Eyeballs they got, though they haven't been able to turn them into money.

Does everything have to be mutually exclusive?!

Google videos may have been losing, but they had enough data to work with for video search, if they were even actively pursuing it.

This is a bit of a stretch; they don't even really compete with each other all that much. Hulu only has TV shows; it doesn't have huge volumes of user-generated content. People don't use Hulu to the exclusion of Youtube or vice versa.

Thank you for pointing that out. I felt like I was losing my mind as I was reading Cuban's blog. Can someone direct me to the place on Hulu where I can upload my kid's gymnastics video so I can send it to my folks living overseas? Oh yeah, that place doesn't exist.

cuban's point is still valid, while youtube accepts user-generated content like your kid's gymnastics video, they will never be able to sell any ads against it, because no one other than you and your family will want to see that video, no offense.

You seemed to have missed the point.

If Youtube's future planning involved using it as a distribution and advertising system for movie or TV studios (an actual business model mind you), well that's potentially shot out of the water with Hulu out of the gates with a very good site and team to do that.

Also as a destination site, Hulu has more attractive content, actual licensed tv shows and movies. Stuff that are technically illegal on Youtube.

The chances of it ever getting such a deal were slim; the media companies already hated them for stealing their content before, and would not have wanted to reward that with a deal to do it legally (some did, yes, but it was unlikely that most or all of the content would have made it into Youtube- particularly with profit splitting between Google and the companies).

Yes, Hulu's content is attractive, but it's different from Youtube's content, which is attractive for other reasons. Just because they're both video doesn't mean they're directly competing.

I was under the impression some media companies had colluded with youtube to allow piracy for a big pay-out once someone bought youtube. This was to let youtube win the video content hosting race through piracy, while still paying for the content everyone thought was pirated.

I am having trouble finding a link to support this though. Does anyone recall this? Perhaps I'm mistaken...

"Yes, Hulu's content is attractive, but it's different from Youtube's content, which is attractive for other reasons."

Is Youtube's content attractive for reasons that would make it just as profitable as Hulu's content?

Cuban is arguing that it is not.

No, Cuban is arguing that Hulu is somehow "beating" Youtube. Even if it is more profitable, it's more profitable in the same way that Apple is more profitable than Adobe.

Hulu also has movies. And YouTube gained popularity largely by hosting the copyrighted material that Hulu now does, though in smaller, less useful chunks that were constantly subject to DMCA takedown notices.

Hulu FTW.

I watched Heroes last night on Hulu. It was more convenient than kicking off a torrent. That is huge.

I'd like it to be HD with no Ads - and I'd love to integrate Tipjoy to give money voluntarily to my favorite shows. I'd also love to be able to download the videos.

I'm not sure a tipping model would generate enough for Hollywood.

Along the same idea of avoiding the ads, I'd rather pay a subscription for a piecemeal selection of HD episodes with no ads.

I think there is room for both, but Hollywood will want a sale.

Tipjoy is going to support any distribution model people want - we're just starting out with voluntary tipping. We're building a general purpose micropayments engine.

i know you gotta sell, sell, sell Tipjoy, but to HN?

Are you saying that I mention my startup and our plans too often on HackerNews? I like hearing about other YC companies here, so I presume others feel the same about me.

True, I actually really like what Tipjoy is doing and imagine you have a few things up your sleeves that your working on, but ...

that last comment felt like you were trying to sell the HN community on what Tipjoy is doing, when I don't think you need that validation.

Maybe I'm just noticing your Tipjoy input more after the whole spiel with that guy writing the blog post saying you guys were floundering.

There is a lot of debate about the future of content monetization, and I thought Tipjoy was really relevant here. I'm not looking for validation, though I'm interested in hearing the different opinions on the topic.

We were a day from releasing a major new feature that got techcrunched when the "floundering" post came up. Clearly he knew nothing.

We're building a general purpose micropayments engine.

That is what we want to hear about. :)

"I'd like it to be HD with no Ads"

The Pointy Haired Boss: "Lets give the customers what they want."

Dilbert: "What they want is better products for free."

Similarly, watermelons are totally kicking lemon's asses - they're bigger, so you're more satisfied if you eat a a melon than a lemon. They're also sweeter, so they taste better.

Give me a break. Hulu is doing completely different things from YouTube, just like blip.tv is doing completely different things from both of them. Each one of them does well what they were intended for. The right question to be asking, if any,is which one of them will replace television as we know it, and although it's impossible to know for sure, my best would be against Hulu.

Eric Schmidt has gone on record saying Google has almost no idea what to do with YouTube. That's not a particularly good thing, and the fact Mark points out about YouTube not being able to monetize the majority of their videos is pretty alarming. It's not a charity.

"Kicking ass" doesn't even make sense in this context.

It controls its media. Ok, good.

I visited YouTube about a dozen times today. Hulu, erm, zero.

Ass kicking? Hardly.

It's not often I agree with Cuban, but did you even read the post?

I did. It was very linkbaity.

That last comment proved that you didn't read it.

because he pointed out that Hulu probably already makes as much, if not more, money than YouTube?

At the end of the day, YouTube has to make something its customers (advertisers, not users) want, and so far it has failed to do so.

By that definition, my website is also kicking YouTube's ass. It made 400€ in revenue last year.

Hulu only works in the US :/

I came here just to say that. Youtube works everywhere, Hulu doesn't and probably won't for a long time.

I believe that restriction is due to contracts with screen writers.

For everyone complaining about the post, he says lots of times that Hulu doesn't have more videos and doesn't let you share videos. He is looking at it solely from a business perspective.

i started watching Family Guy on there but it had ADVERTISING! i don't mind ads around the player, but interrupting the actual content is worse than a popup for me. of course, it's not as much advertising as on TV, but it's something i don't expect on the internet

i'd rather download the torrent, though i guess that's not the sort of thing Hulu is for. it seems more like a replacement for TV

there is value in keeping certain acquisitions out of competitors hands.

YouTube is no Broadcast.com, that's for sure.

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