I know plenty of Boxee fans might think Hulu is nothing but an evil plot to destroy its open source video player. Due to Hulu, recently blocking its content from Boxee. But hey, Hulu’s done plenty of great things to bring all that TV entertainment to our computers, for free. If you don’t already know what Hulu does, in a nutshell it provides hours of high quality television shows and movies for free on the web. So let’s take a minute to celebrate its 1 year anniversary, which is today.
Exactly one year ago today, Hulu came out of Beta and was made publically available to the US. Since then, the website has grown from 12,000 videos in March of 2008, to 40,000 videos as of today. Here’s some quick facts taken from their blog:
- Hulu serves over 24 million users on a monthly basis (based on comScore VideoMetrix, January 2009).
- Hulu has grown from 50 partners to over 130 today
- Hulu’s number of advertising partners has grown from 30 to 175 in one year.
- In May of last year, Hulu provided a total of 63 million streams. Since then, the company has grown to 308 million streams, according to Nielsen VideoCensus.
And lastly…
- By Hulu’s estimates, the team has consumed approximately 2,347 tacos from the, “unnamed taco truck," that parks down the street from their office.
In conjunction with its one year anniversary, Hulu has added a new social networking feature to its site. You guessed it, Friends. With this added feature Hulu will allow its users to connect with other users and share what they are currently watching. Hulu is on top of the game with this new features. It has already integrated adding contacts from Facebook, MySpace, Gmail, MSN Hotmail, and Yahoo! Mail.
Congratulations Hulu, now let's get an official partnership with Boxee underway, please!
