

Hulu is kicking Youtube's Ass - johns
http://www.blogmaverick.com/2008/06/16/hulu-is-kicking-youtubes-ass/

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iamelgringo
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.

~~~
mrkurt
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.

~~~
Hexstream
Does everything have to be mutually exclusive?!

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rory096
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.

~~~
ghiotion
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.

~~~
condor
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.

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ivankirigin
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.

~~~
jotto
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.

~~~
ivankirigin
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.

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

~~~
ivankirigin
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.

~~~
wumi
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.

~~~
ivankirigin
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.

~~~
wumi
_We're building a general purpose micropayments engine._

 _That_ is what we want to hear about. :)

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andreyf
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.

~~~
wumi
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.

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bprater
"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.

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

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bprater
I did. It was very linkbaity.

~~~
wumi
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.

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

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Hexstream
Hulu only works in the US :/

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

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pchristensen
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.

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tokipin
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

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

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

