Dear Hulu, I am Sick and Damed Tired of Waiting…

In case you haven’t heard, XBox 360 and Hulu have been promising a partnership since the fall of 2010. This announcement was not provided to me by the misinformed rant of a Cyber Nerd, but by the marketing campaign of XBox. The point of the campaign: To convince me that I needed to subscribe to their premium “Gold” membership. The “language” in the marketing material stated that Hulu would be available on the XBox 360 desktop early 2011.

Ha! Here it is, middle of March, and still no Hulu. I was, at most, slightly annoyed. More honestly, though, I am filled with righteous indignation. Not simply because XBox and Hulu fail to recognize that, as a result of their past offerings, I have become a rank and file overly-impatient consumer. I am angry mostly because mergers like XBox 360/Hulu have always come a day late and a dollar short.

Take the iPhone. When my colleagues and I were considering Smartphones, we resisted Apple’s product because of the negative press ATT was receiving. When we heard that Apple was extending their offering to include Verizon users, we jumped for joy. “Finally!”, we said, “the best of both worlds.” So we waited, and waited and waited. By the time we were done waiting, Android arrived, and RIM’s Blackberry had reformatted itself as a true Smartphone contender. Needless to say, we went with a non-Apple solution.

The point is I would like for companies to stop prematurely announcing these super-fantastic mergers. If you don’t have a basic conceptual agreement in hand, don’t announce. It makes me crazy. I get it! You want to bait the hook. You feel your market share slipping, so you want to beg for a little time. It may be a great way of keeping us, in the same way giving a promise ring to my girlfriend would keep her from shopping around, but it is only short term. Just like my woman will figure out that I don’t intend to marry her, we will figure out that you don’t intend to deliver on the content your promising.

So…STOP IT!! It aint cute, it’s frustrating, and it’s bad for my ODC.

BTW…I don’t have a girlfriend.

A+GS

Hulu: Do Be Evil

Hulu’s value proposition differs from traditional broadcast and cable television in a very unique way. Hulu’s value proposition does not restrict it to a single network of programming. This is important because that freedom gives Hulu the freedom to capture those shows that are important to it’s viewing audience. Because of Hulu’s “Free Agent” flexibility, and because Hulu’s content is consumer driven, Hulu can restrict it’s catalogue to only show’s that have high ratings (CPM).

Why was Google so successful?

Google’s early success has little to do with “White Space”, the Network Effect or Metcalfe’s Law and the number of nodes connected to the one another. By leveraging their algorithm that indexes websites by rank, Google was able to influence companies into paying to be at the top of the list. It is the contextual search and the accompanying contextual advertising that makes Google popular with companies.

Admittedly, Google’s interface is cleaner and easier to navigate, which is more attractive to busy people who don’t want to be overly inundated with information they cannot use. This does create a draw. But even when Google’s market share was significantly lower than Yahoo and other websites, Google was still able to be profitable. This indicates to me that Google’s success had nothing to do with adoption rates or size of the user community.

Click vs Brick

The key challenge to online start ups, as compared with brick and mortar is consumer impatience. All other factors being equal, a consumers are far less likely to wait for an item than go in to purchase it at a store. If price and customization is not an issue, the consumer wants the product “in hand”. Brick and mortar stores provide for this by relieving the itch of instant gratification in a way that online companies cannot.

Additionally, brick and mortar stores have trustworthiness built into their brand, as compared to online stores. Consumers might feel more comfortable purchasing an item if they believed that s/he could return it the same day, instead of waiting for the shipping process.