subject: YouTube vs. Hulu, Can They Compete with a Video 3.0 Website? [print this page] YouTube vsYouTube vs. Hulu, Can They Compete with a Video 3.0 Website?
Social networking sites in which explicit connections are made between parties interested in exchanging information and media content are increasingly gaining in popularity. While some social networking sites such as Orkut, Facebook and Friendster are purely social, others such as
YouTube, Flickr, and LiveJournal are highly content oriented while maintaining a social component as well. The nature of the interaction between content and connections is fundamentally important to examine. What types of connections are made, e.g. are they in a public forum, or by subscription? How is the content acquired?
YouTube, in particular, allows for a variation in content type: videos, images, music, and text. In addition to the variety of content types, it further allows two types of social relationships: subscriptions and friendships. Thus, YouTube is undoubtedly a site ripe for consideration on the question of how content and contacts are related, and indeed has been studied in this context. Moreover, YouTube provides the ability for users to form explicit groups, in which an explicit category affiliation is noted. Each group has a set of members who have explicitly chosen to join the group, a collection of videos submitted by members in the group, topics which the group members wish to discuss, discussions or notes on the individual post or comment each member wishes to say to a particular topic in the group. There is always a downside when a subscription element enters the picture, simply because the state of monitoring tends to change.
Like YouTube, Hulu is another video streaming site. Although YouTube is hugely popular, Hulu does have some advantages over the monster company. Hulu's content is professionally generated; they offer programming from their owners: NBCUniversal, ABC and Fox Entertainment. YouTube, on the other hand, suffers by comparison since the majority of the videos are made by amateurs, are of poor quality, and create lag time in the transmission. On the other hand, Hulu depends quite extensively on advertising for their income. This does not seem to have affected viewers' interest; Hulu's in July 2009 reached 38 million viewers.
The potential fly in the ointment' for both YouTube and Hulu is the introduction of video 3.0 websites onto the market. The big studios have many advantages on their side. First and foremost they own the product. They are able to provide the most up-to-date films for viewers, even before sites like Hulu and YouTube. A model for this was formulated in 2009 when three of Hollywood's major studios, Lionsgate, Paramount and MGM, formed Epix, a 720p streaming service for films. Not only is Epix able to offer films not yet available on DVD, but they do not have advertisements, a current drawback for Hulu.
Multiple video 2.0 is a website which contains videos that come from multiple sources. The advantage of this type of site is the ability to unify delivery to cable boxes, pcs and mobile devices. This system is capable of streaming videos as well as downloading standard delivery files. It can serve millions of subscribers at once, it is simple to operate, and it does not require the most up to date hardware in order for it to run.
XYZ.TV, the newest site on the Internet, incorporates the advantages of multiple video 2.0, YouTube and Hulu, all at one site. It is capable of providing films, TV shows, and news, music and sports videos. It will have the capability to upload content, and to be a fully functioning social network site. Initially, it will not be able to compete in the video 3.0 market, but who knows what the future may hold?
