Can Hulu.com Destroy YouTube.com?

In October 2007, NBC and News Corp. joined in the ever-increasing online broadcasting business by beta testing Hulu.com. Thought by many to be a direct threat to YouTube.com, Hulu shows in superior quality television shows, user-submitted programming and even some movies. Although primarily geared towards television shows and movies, Hulu provides users with the ability to publish their own works. Taking their lead from the MySpace and Facebook crowd, Hulu allows users to externally link to their programs. Ultimately, high definition programming will also be available.

Hulu has been touted as the potential end of YouTube, but they may well find a way to co-exist, with Hulu as the Facebook of online video production and YouTube the MySpace. Hulu's video quality is far superior to YouTube's, brought in large part by the fact that the corporations funding Hulu exalt their ability to provide quality close to that found on televisions. High definition programming is available in limited quantities, with the hope to expand this feature in the future. Resolution is set to the maximum available on a given user's bandwidth, and the full capacities of the new Flash Player 9 are utilized, according to the Hulu website.

At this point, naturally, Hulu offers a smaller library than YouTube. This is not expected to change dramatically in the near future, particularly since YouTube has had a number of years to build its library. Additionally, material depicted on Hulu needs copyright permissions and may be slow to add as a result. Hulu plans to go international as soon as possible, but copyright laws make this a very slow process.

The focus is different, as well. Whereas Hulu attempts to focus on professional programming, YouTube focuses on user created, independent programming. YouTube is gaudy and loud, with constantly changing videos and an emphasis on free and easy. Hulu uses commercial spots (3 minutes average) to provide "free" content for their site. Some movies may be broken up into sections.

YouTube does not knowingly depict copyrighted material. YouTube users can easily search thousands of videos created by friends or others. Hulu users search in much the same way, but their finds are quite different. The search on YouTube sometimes finds varied video content even when the same search is entered and may not find all material sought. This is due to user-entered search codes and the fact that videos are added often. Hulu offers more consistent search coding.

Site performance for both Hulu and YouTube remains pretty consistent for any website. Although sites may be down for periods of time, both are up more often than not. YouTube's Google backing allowed for increased finances, permitting it to run better than it had in the past.

Time will tell if Hulu can destroy or injure YouTube, though it's doing a good job of making Google nervous about their investment. They provide different things for different sets of people. Ultimately, the movies and television programs shown on Hulu will likely draw a crowd. Time will tell whether that crowd will get bored with the commercials or if the novelty will wear off, and YouTube may see some initial problems. But the joy in seeing one's comrades in action on the monitor is not likely to disappear.