Digital Design Blog

“Clown Co.” Or Future of Digital Media?

There’s been a ton of hype, cynicism and general web chatter about the promise of Hulu.com, the joint online video network from NBC Universal and Fox since the mid-summer announcement of the service. TechCrunch notoriously dubbed the effort “Clown Co.” and has been skeptical about any success since NBC pulled its digital programming from iTunes and YouTube. Others have been more optimistic.

So, when I received a beta-test invite the other week, I was eager to try out the service for myself — just the thing to do I while nursing a post-Thanksgiving turkey hangover, I figured.

Surprisingly Strong Video Service
What I found was generally to my liking. The site-design is both simple and slick with a very minimalist aesthetic. That helps tee-up Hulu’s great strength, which is a letterbox media window that houses the video player. It’s a dramatic treatment that is richly deserved as Hulu’s Flash-based media player is truly top notch. Boasting progressive streaming, the image quality is as striking over my pokey home DSL as the T1 in my office.

Flash-Player Is Strongest Element
The Flash-player itself is the highlight of the site, allowing users to share in most conceivable manners including embedding, emailing, etc. The rating feature is nice (which hints at the community elements to come) as well as the surfacing of advertising and related videos once you are done viewing a clip.

The navigation is shockingly straightforward: “Popular Episodes”, “Popular Clips” and “Browse Titles” and index pages are nicely done allowing for easy browsing. The content offerings are robust, featuring full-episodes from all Fox and NBC networks and cable subsidies.

In essence, Hulu.com is a perfect video service — one that is as strong as Brightcove, Veoh or any other of the new streaming services. It’s technically excellent, the UI is clean, simple and straightforward, there’s a robust library of premium content and the design aesthetic is slick without being overbearing.

Overall Consumer Experience Feels Flat
Why then does the overall consumer experience seem to feel so flat? The answer, I think, is the sterility of the service. There’s no there there, just a great library of content (streaming-only) and nothing else.

While this “programmed” experience may have been good enough 5 or 10 years ago, our expectations of digital experiences have changed. Today the conversation is bi-directional and messy. YouTube marries professionally produced content to the most mundane work of amateurs. The New York Times features user comments on the home page and CNN routinely puts “citizen journalism” front and center. This is a new dynamic that has no set rules yet, but is literally bubbly with life.

Missing Convergence Culture
No such thing going at Hulu.com. There’s just the content and content, at least professionally produced content, isn’t king any more. Hollywood may still be oblivious to this but it’s glaringly obvious on the Web and it’s the main reason Hulu.com disappoints. Today’s best Web properties thrive off of a “convergence culture” where professional content freely mingles with rank amateur offerings. It’s a lively mix of high, low and in-between.

Some refute my point and look to iTunes and say that Apple’s success is due to the quality of its content. But that’s not true. It’s the simplicity of the experience — the seamless download and ability to manage your media that makes Apples iTunes and iPods and iPhones shine. Not the ability to download one particular piece of media (or stream it for that matter).

There’s still hope for NBC and Fox with Hulu.com. The site is still in “beta” and the underlying platform is excellent. More importantly, there’s still time for Hulu.com to adapt to this converged world. Let’s see if they will.