Hulu is great, but in the U.S. only
Hulu offers a vast selection of premium programming across all genres and content types including hit shows, movies, clips and more.
I really love it, so I was really happy to become part of the beta testers community. Once I logged in, one of the first things I read on the home page was: Watch your favorites. Anytime. Anywhere.
I thought “This is super!” but then when I started to browse the site searching for some episodes among my favorite shows I found this message
My fault, I forgot that now I’m in Europe…and that the Hulu Team already said that for now the videos are available for streaming in the United States only.
Anyway, here are my thoughts. I think that the Hulu concept is great.
I’m travelling for business really often so being able to watch what I want ‘anytime’ is definitely an advantage that would make me a Hulu affectionated, but it’s the ‘anywhere’ factor that I think still needs more focus. So what about trying to test it in Europe too?
In Europe there are already countries which offer TV shows in original language so Hulu and its content wouldn’t find big roadblocks to be tested. Now for example I’m in Finland, one of the most advanced information society clusters after US, and here all the shows and movies are in original language (yes, nothing is dubbed, just subtitles).
From my prespective, considering a community of beta testers mainly composed by US users only means leaving out a big part of feedback which could point out additional key ‘issues’ that Hulu would face anyway when it will be used on larger scale.
So if the intention is to make Hulu growing worldwide, why we are not going to create some smaller beta tester groups outside US (Europe, Asia, Australia etc.)?
Then looking at Hulu and its core architecture, what about adding feeds capabilities? Insted of having just the main feed which shows the new upcoming content, what about:
- adding feeds to everyone’s playlist? (I don’t know if there already is one because now I’m in Europe so I couldn’t add anything to my playlist).
- adding feeds to reviews posted by users on each show?
Another thing is related to the relationship that Hulu could have with today’s new social media world. For example I’m talking about the possibility to post favourite episodes/shows on digg, delicious or other networks. This would be good also for the producers of the shows to get feedback on what they have created and to give space to the ‘fans phenomenon’ online.
In addition to this I was also thinking about the mobility factor. This is really important, we are going mobile, so what about accessibility from mobile devices?
Even if now I’m in Europe and I can’t use it, I’m happy to be part of the beta testers. In my opinion Hulu is a very good concept, and it would be nice to keep talking about several other thoughts I have in my mind on what could be improved/experimented in Hulu, but let’s stop here for now.
What’s your point of view about Hulu? and if you are a beta tester what do you think about it? Hulu Team, what are your thoughts after this feedback?
Andrea