Hulu launches friends lists, marks a year on the Web

Video hub Hulu now lets its members amass friends lists much like a standard social-networking service, the site said Thursday.

You can now invite friends from your e-mail address books or Facebook and MySpace accounts, and then see a feed of what your friends have been watching, commenting on, or subscribing to.

In the event that you find this creepy or don't want your boss to catch on to the fact that you watch reruns of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia all day long you can disable these activity-feed features.

The announcement comes in conjunction with the one-year anniversary of Hulu's public debut. To mark the occasion, the NBC Universal-News Corp. joint venture will introduce over the next week a "bevy of new shows, more seasons of user favorites, and classic cartoons and movies."

Also new: a sort of trends page with rankings of the most e-mailed, searched, and embedded videos, as well as editors favorites. Not surprisingly, Saturday Night Live is a huge hit, and the most-searched name on the site is "Palin."

On the less pleasant side of things, Hulu's one-year anniversary comes at a time when the site is dealing very publicly with the invariable old media-new media gulf: pressure from content owners caused the site to ax its support for buzzworthy video software maker Boxee earlier this month.

[Shell Huber]

I loved Hulu until they cut off Boxee and Understudy.

I spend a lot of time on my computer on work and info but I like watching TV programs on TV.

Now I never watch Hulu.
I emailed Hulu and they said the content providers forced them to drop Boxee and Understudy.

I don't believe them. I guess the "Providers" speak with one voice?
Hey Hulu whats the deal?

[shyx06]

It's so slow when I watched Huhu videos at home. However my home computer works fine with youtube videos. Why Huhu videos are so slow? Was this the case for you too

[paulsecic]

I adore HULU. Hopfully they'll add more 50's classics!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[extirpator]

Actually, all it takes is one of their providers telling them to disallow functionality with a specific piece of hardware/software for them to pull the plug. I believe Hulu relies mainly on NBC and Universal for most of it's content if I recall correctly, and that doesn't leave a whole lot of room on the negotiations table. The better question here is why did one of their providers want to pull Hulu support for Boxee and Understudy?

As an example, perhaps these were circumventing the Hulu ads in some way, and if so were these companies paying to give their end users that privilege? If not, I could easily see the providers wanting to yanking support, after all the shows have to be payed for some how, and with services like itunes the end user pays a small amount to eliminate the commercials; however with Hulu the ads pay for what individuals watch. Thus bypassing them eliminates any potential profit from being made, and the shows loose funding. With cable TV you are exposed to a significantly larger amount of ads, and pay the cable company. The cable companies in turn pay the providers a percentage of you're monthly cable fee, so being able to bypass commercials on cable isn't as significant an impact. With sites like Hulu you have the potential to bypass the middle man cable company fee. And so people understand, you're net connection fee through a cable company (if that's what you use) doesn't pay the content providers, typically it only pays the cable companies for providing you with net access.

[extirpator]

Note my second paragraph above is a speculative example for people to think about. I do not have a Boxee or use Understudy, and have no idea what the actual transpired to cause the issue. I just want people to be aware that often there are reasonable reasons a company like Hulu may have been forced to pull support for those products. Boycotting Hulu isn't going to magically make them support a product again. Also realize Boxee apparently came out with a RSS workaround for Hulu if that matters.

[Shell Huber]

I forgot to mention Boxee had the sharing with friends from the beginning.

[QuadFather]

Shell Huber,

You should check out http://www.sec

[Shell Huber]

No such site.

[jbcahill]

Due to the way Hulu has acted toward Boxee, I am boycotting Hulu until they change their attitude.

[fiver0013]

Not everything needs social networking. Can we please stop this madness? If I want to watch streaming TV programming, I want to watch TV. I'll do my social networking elsewhere.

[bknowledge]

I agree 100%. If you need to social network then you can twitter, im or send sms. After all you are already on a computer. What Hulu needs to do in add more seasons to the shows that they have and in add more servers.

[cbrseadude]

Wonder when the time will come when sites like Hulu are not free? Its all about the money, right?
And no doubt, we dont need another social networking site! Thats a joke.

[dhartze]

HULU is a very sophisticated fun site. I have watched every episode of STACKED at least twice.

[wisewallstreetwiz]

The earlier comments definitely echo my sentiments. Social networking has now become too much. Perhaps I'm "anti-social" but honestly my friends don't need to see that I'm watching reruns of America's Next Top Model or Dancing With the Stars ;)