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In a recent interview, Hulu CEO Jason Kilar told technology reporter Om Malik that his company was "very bullish" on mobile, even going so far as to say "we will embrace every device." That's a funny statement, considering that the company has been touting that same sentiment for years but has yet to launch anything for mobile, be it an app or simply a mobile-ready streaming site. Now, with the launch of the iPad just around the corner, the rumors of an iPhone/iPad Hulu app are rising up again. But there's a bigger mobile web than just the one accessible via Apple products, and that may be what Hulu has its eye on now. "We don't think about one device only," Kilar said. However, going mobile is going to be a challenge for Hulu. And it's not as simple as re-encoding a few videos, no matter what you may have heard. Sponsor Problem A: Hulu's Business Model Needs Work The fact that Hulu exists at all is somewhat of an amazement. Through tenuous connections with major studios, the collaborative, experimental effort to bring streaming TV to web (and make it profitable) has managed to attract a number of users in the U.S. Although the audience size varies widely depending on who's counting, the company has managed to become a household name thanks to eye-catching commercials on NBC featuring actors from the network's top shows. But there's a problem facing Hulu: in-video advertising is, apparently, not as profitable as once hoped. In fact, it's just too expensive , says Marc Ruxin, the Chief Innovation Officer for ad agency network McCann Worldgroup. Hulu has been aware of this problem, though, and has been hinting towards the launch of a subscription service , with News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch telling an investor conference last fall that the company, was looking at "adding subscription services and pay per view" options. Through the subscription model, Hulu could potentially generate enough revenue to keep the studios happy and maybe even encourage them to offer up more programming. Unfortunately, the subscription model has yet to launch and the profits from video ads have been far too lean for some Hulu participants. Recently, for example, Viacom pulled two of the top shows - The Daily Show and the Colbert Report - from the site, claiming that they simply weren't earning enough money via the advertising model currently in place. Viacom Inc. Chief Executive Officer Philippe Dauman said that "on the current economic model for Hulu, there's just not much in it for us to continue at this time." And so the situation degrades. So what is Hulu doing now? It's trying to attract more viewers to its site with the launch of " If I Can Dream ," an original series that premiered earlier this month. The fact that they're now making the foray into this sort of online programming is somewhat worrying. After all, if hit video webisodes alone made for a profitable service, then YouTube would have achieved profitability ages ago, instead of (maybe) getting there this year , five years post-launch. Let's face it, original programming is a bonus for Hulu users, but it's not going to take the place of hot shows like the now-departed Comedy Central fare. Problem B: Will Apple Allow a Hulu App on the iPhone/iPad? Another problem? Hulu has been planning to delay its iPhone app launch until a subscription model was in place, according to earlier reports . But with the biggest names pulling out, subscriptions could be a harder sell. Still, even if Hulu was able to make subscriptions happen, there are no guarantees that Apple would ever allow them into the iTunes store, especially considering they're offering a competing product. (See: Google Voice banishment from the iPhone , for example). Meanwhile, Hulu's online site doesn't work in the iPhone's web browser because it was built in Flash. If Apple rejects the Hulu app from iTunes, the company's other option is encoding all their site's content in H.264 and make that available via HTML5, the new web language that offers streaming video sans plugin. Since this has already been done, a Hulu app could launch a player on the iPhone or iPad, if, of course, Apple allowed them to do so. If not, then a mobile site would have to be built in HTML5 - video controls, overall UI, advertisements and all. That's no simple process. What's Hulu Doing Now? So is this the plan Hulu has decided on now? It's hard to know for sure. Like Apple, the company is incredibly secretive about their plans and product roadmap, often refusing to respond to calls and emails entirely, even to say "no comment." And yet, the Hulu iPhone app exists. We've spoken to someone who's seen it...but that was ages ago. For all we know, iPhone/iPad app plans have since been scrapped to work on a new solution that works around any potential Apple restrictions. But sources inside Hulu have clammed up lately, meaning they're either building something top, top secret...or perhaps nothing at all. We hope it's the former, because frankly, an iPad without Hulu is a sad, sad affair. But will we ever see a real app? At this point, we're not holding our breath. Discuss
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Hulu on the iPad? Not as Easy as it Sounds
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As of today, Facebook Fan Page status updates will begin appearing in Google search results, according to a tweet by Google. The announcement means that we will begin seeing results from the nearly 3 million fan pages, but not from the more than 400 million users. Google currently controls around 90% of the search engine market, according to StatCounter , with Yahoo and Bing it's closest competitors. Will Bing's exclusive access to Facebook user updates change this at all? Sponsor Google first announced the expansion of its real-time Web search last December, noting that it would include data from Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed, Jaiku, Indenti.ca and Twitter. And, of course, Buzz is now included in that list. Since then, Bing and Yahoo have made deals to step up their real-time Web search as well. Yahoo recently brokered a deal with Twitter and Bing expanded its partnership with Facebook to become the default on-site search engine for the social network. Also included in the Bing deal was the ability to fully index public user updates, but this functionality is not yet available. While it may be true that having access to only Facebook Fan Page updates puts Google at a disadvantage in terms of the sheer volume of content indexed, do we really want to have every piece of content shared by those 400 million users in our search results? A recent post here on ReadWriteWeb garnered a large stream of traffic from Facebook's more technologically inept portion of its user base and the resulting comments were less then intellectual. As Brandee Barker, a spokeswoman for Facebook, told us the other day, "Facebook Pages are designed to provide authentic voices for public figures, celebrities, and organizations." While some are arguing these new results will just be a stream of advertisements and self-promotion, they will focus on official voices from organizations and the content they want to share. We're not sure about you, but maybe we don't want to hear every little thing every person on the planet has to say about everything. Although the Internet is a great and democratizing force, perhaps having some filters remain in place isn't the end of the world. It can be hard enough just keeping up with the stream of updates as it is. Adding the daily chatter of 400 million may just go one step too far - although we'd still like the option. Maybe, in the end, this will give Bing a bigger share of the search engine market, and that isn't a bad thing. Just like a multi-party political system offers more choices, maybe a more balanced search engine market would be better for us too. When we want the official word from official organizations, we can go to Google. When we want to put our finger on the pulse of the 400 million users, we can go to Bing. Discuss
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Google Takes First Shot at Facebook Search Results
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real-time web,
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social,
yahoo
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Apps on the iPhone, there are so very many of them - how's a person to find the best ones? We look at a whole lot of them here at ReadWriteWeb and we'd like to share with you some of our favorites we've discovered in the month of February. Some of us on the team are proud Android users but most of us are still using iPhones. I just discovered how incredibly effective the Genius recommendations on the phone can be, so I've been going nuts downloading new apps. Here are the ones our staff is most excited about this month. A semantic personal assistant, health and fitness apps, some great news apps, location based social networking apps and more are included this month. Sponsor Excited about iPhone apps? Don't forget to download the ReadWriteWeb iPhone app . It's a great way to read all our articles while on the go. Here are the ten apps we discovered this month and are most excited about. Siri - A semantic smart virtual personal assistant, chosen by Frederic Lardinois. "Siri is one of the most ambitious mobile services we have seen in the last few years. Imagine if you could just talk to you phone and tell it to call you a taxi, reserve a table at your favorite restaurant or tell you what the weather in New York City will be like tomorrow," we wrote in our review . OboPay - A mobile payment app, chosen by Dana Oshiro. Lots of big companies are putting millions of dollars behind this startup that they believe could be the future of money transfers on the go. Google Voice Mobile Web App - An HTML5 mobile web app for Google Voice, chosen by Richard MacManus. When this app launched at the end of January, we ran a poll asking readers if it was good enough to use as a phone. 65% said it was. A month later, Richard still feels that way. iFitness - A mobile fitness app, picked by Richard, who wrote 2 weeks ago : "Described as 'a personal trainer for your iPhone,' the app lists over 260 exercises. It has text and photographic instructions for all of those exercises, with video for 100 of them... iFitness features exercise logging and graphing. In addition it has 12 routines for various goals; including weight loss, strength, golf program, and more. The app also allows you to create your own custom workout." Data Logger from Pachube - An "Internet of Things" feed tracker, chosen by Richard. Pachube is an open source platform enabling developers to connect sensor data to the Web. We covered it in depth this Fall . iWriteWords - A much celebrated app to help kids learn to write, chosen by RWW's Production Editor Abraham Hyatt. Gowalla - A design-centric location based social network, chosen by me, Marshall Kirkpatrick. I wrote about Gowalla in depth yesterday . I love it, I just with there were more people in Portland that were using it. Etsy Adict - An awesome 3rd party iPhone app for browsing Etsy listings. I love this app! I regularly spend hours strolling through listings for ceramic and fiber arts items. If you're not familiar with the wildly popular site Etsy, check out this coverage of the company . The app is built on top of a Mashery -powered API and (disclosure) Mashery is a sponsor of ReadWriteWeb. SitbyUs - A mobile web app I reviewed last week and am really excited to use. It's a seat-level check-in system for SXSW. It will tell you in which rooms and what sections your Twitter friends are sitting, so you can find them after a panel, etc. Guardian iPhone App - This daily news app is the best I've ever seen. It's fantastic. It's like $5 but it's worth it, if only to see how they made it. But it's lots of fun to use too. If you like this kind of thing, see also the CFR (Council on Foreign Relations) app. Those are our favorite new iPhone apps, what are yours? Stay tuned for next month's selections. Discuss
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Our Hottest New iPhone App Discoveries: February Edition
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There's a fine line between what is considered a knowledge database and an invasion of privacy, and that line is likely to be determined by marketing. This week we wrote an article about Please Rob Me - a service that identifies Foursquare and Gowalla check-ins on Twitter and lets others know that a person is not home. While location-based services are often touted for their social and recommendation-based benefits, the realization that they can be used negatively have many questioning the responsibility of those groups that collect the data. Sponsor In mid January Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg stated that the age of privacy had come to an end and we responded that evolving preferences were not a valid justification of the elimination of privacy preferences . Nevertheless, between cookie tracking and browser identifiers like those shown in the EFF's Panopticlick and the fact that it only takes your zip code, gender and birthdate to identify you, it's hard to ensure total privacy in the first place. If a startup were to put up a page simply to capture the information of your friends, all of of your daily habits, your location and your purchases, few would opt in. But as Last.fm's Felix Miller pointed out more than 4 years ago , you might do it for "myware". While spyware is undeniably a dubious thing, myware is the practice of spying on yourself for benefit. Last.fm's AudioScrobbler collects data on a user's listening habits, songs, tags, preferences and friends. That information is then used to update a database and an algorithm then calculates song recommendations. Across the Web that same system of opting into myware is used to target advertising, make shopping recommendations, deliver relevant news and provide customized services. But because this is marketed as a service, rather than a personal data grab, few mainstream users weigh the disadvantages to opting in until it's too late. Google Voice's transcription feature is a great way to take notes on your calls, but isn't it akin to opting into a wiretap? As startup entrepreneurs, what responsibility do we have to educate our users on the perils of opting in? And how can we do this without disrupting the virality of the service? Photo Credit: Rob Pongsajapan Discuss
The rest is here:
MyWare: Personalized Service or Invasion of Privacy?
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audio,
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elimination,
friends,
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