>Deep linking is critical – new idea from YouTube
>With increasing amounts of long form video content available on the web, it’s going to be increasingly important for publishers to provide mechanisms for segmenting or deep linking into videos.
People have always chunked programmes into segments, perhaps favourite bits or funny scenes or lines. These have been manually segmented and uploaded since the day YouTube launched. Here’s an example and excuse to watch the famous McGyver coffin jet ski escape scene:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTWEh2mcdsg&hl=en&fs=1]
Read More>The story of the YouTube killer
>Wired has a very interesting article about Hulu with an interview with Jason Kilar, CEO of Hulu. Jason explains how he came to be involved and how from March 2008 to August they created the 8th largest video site in the US.
There is a great quote in response to the viewing figures the web receives in comparison to TV, from Peter Chernin, president of News Corporation, Fox’s corporate parent.
“So what?” Chernin says. “You can’t protect old business models artificially.” This is a truth the tech community knows well, but it’s not what you expect to hear from a media baron like Chernin. What he and Zucker [chief of NBC Universal] have come to understand is that the media companies no longer have a choice: If they don’t put their shows online, someone else will. “The best way to combat piracy is to make your content available,” Zucker says. “We don’t know for sure what the impact is going to be on our established businesses. But we want to make sure consumers know they don’t need to steal our content. That’s really what Hulu is about.”
Read the whole story, it’s an interesting read.
Read More>Why I trust Hulu (part 2)
>In a previous Hulu post I waxed lyrically about the design and general loveliness of using Hulu.
That’s obviously important, but without quality content it’s just html, flash and some quite well done ads. The way Hulu deals with its wide range of content is very impressive and something we can all learn from. Essentially where the content originated from is given little importance. When you view an episode of Heroes there is no mention of which producer, channel or studio owns it. In Hululand it’s the content and the genre of the content which is important, not whether it’s a Fox, Warner Bros or Discovery channel programme.
This is a brave and I believe probably correct approach. The BBC could possibly have launched iPlayer without the channel associations, but they didn’t and now it’s very difficult to imagine them ever going. If you imagine BBC content on Hulu, there would be no mention of the channels, the stamp of quality would simply be ‘BBC’.
The breadth and amount of quality is impressive (probably greater than that on offer at any given time on the iPlayer). You can watch 37 episodes of Buck Rogers (including the fantastically titled ‘Planet of the Amazon Women’), 57 clips from the Onion News Network, 1152 clips from The Simpsons, 5 episodes and 65 clips of Heroes, and it looks as if all new episodes of The Daily Show will be available.
There are hundreds of full movies, from classics through to more recent releases, and many more movie clips. All for free. Critically, Hulu’s content is high quality, profesional content and it’s becoming clear this is where the advertisers want to be.
There is a Family channel on Hulu, but the content and the site as a whole are definitely aimed at adults. I imagine at some point this family channel will spin off and a child friendly version of Hulu will launch, possibly to try and compete with the power of Disney.
So what next for Hulu? Well content, advertising and territories are key for future success. Hulu’s in a strong position in terms of content, being backed by NBC and Fox, but there is content from many other providers. The competition is lagging, Joost is going browser based but critically, without the content it won’t make the same impact.
YouTube is miles ahead of everyone in terms of video views and audience, but being mainly user generated content, it’s struggling to bring in the advertising bucks that it should be.
Here in the UK we can’t view any Hulu content, and it’s unlikely we’ll ever see hulu.co.uk launching. The main channels in the UK are heavily invested in either the iPlayer, or the future release of Kangaroo (hopefully). It’s unlikely that these channels will hand over content to Hulu, but hopefully project Kangaroo will learn a lot from Hulu and will launch with an impressive, clean, mature and uncluttered product next year. I might register Kangarulu.co.uk just in case.
Note: In the UK you can browse Hulu and get a sense of the breadth of the content, however you can’t actually watch the video – unless you are sneaky, or you know someone sneaky.
Read More>Just how powerful is YouTube?
>I’ve been doing some research recently into video syndication sites. I’ve spent some time poking around Tubemogul and they’ve got some interesting research papers on video distribution and codecs.
Of particular interest is the study Which Video Sites Deliver the Most Views?
YouTube is a clear winner, but the difference between YouTube and the competition is quite starling.
“While YouTube dominates the averages, sites other than YouTube still control a great deal of the audience out there. Adding up the site averages, a video producer could almost double their audience by also distributing to the additional sites listed.”
>Youtube up the quality
>Your friend and mine Youtube has recently announced they’re increasing the quality of their videos.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cpd_lHjFDk&hl=en]
You can switch between the higher and lower quality versions either through your settings or on this demo on the rather clunky link below the video.
It’s not quite perfected yet as the aspect ratio looks a bit off to me. Still, an increase on the quality of Youtube playback can only be a good thing.
More info on the Youtube Blog.
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