Hulu Gets It Right

For anyone who doesn’t know (though I can’t imagine any of you who read this blog don’t) Hulu.com is a joint venture from NBC and Fox to bring their shows to the web. In addition, Hulu includes other various TV channels as well as tons of movies. While this sounds like a fairly simple concept, many in the internet world predicted that Hulu will fail miserably.

Since its launch in the fall of ‘07, Hulu has grown to user base of nearly 4 million per month.

To be honest, I have no idea why more people don’t watch Hulu on a regular basis. Last night there was nothing on TV that interested me, which has been a recurring theme of late. So instead of wasting time watching some nonsense on MTV or obsessively searching for Ravens-Steelers coverage, I decided to watch some old episodes of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Quick aside: Always Sunny is one of the most over-the-top, outrageously hilarious shows I’ve ever seen. For some unknown reason, I never watched it until the most recent season and now I can’t stop watching it.

But back to Hulu. I watched three episodes last night, each of which were approximately 22 minutes long and contained only 3, 30-second ads each. Now granted, Hulu advertising is nothing more than TV spots repurposed for the web, but still the experience of having to watch 1 30-second commercial at a time is quite better than a 2-3 minute commercial break. While I think there is much room for improving the advertising platform of Hulu and online video in general, the user experience of Hulu is dead on.

Today, thanks to a link from Mike, I saw Hulu’s announcement that they will have a live broadcast of the Presidential Inauguration. After my recent experiences with Hulu, I can’t think of another place I’d rather watch this. I mean, you know, unless I was actually going to be at the inauguration or anywhere besides work.

What have your experiences with Hulu been? Where are you watching the inauguration?