Hulu, a video platform that I profiled on last October has officially launched to the public. It can be viewed as a move by Hulu’s owners, i.e. News corp. and NBC Universal to regain control over the Internet video sector. Despite the fact that a huge popularity of YouTube on the Web, Hulu has a big potential to improve and further conquer the market, as several favorite shows or movies such as The Simpsons, The Office, Saturday Night Live, House, The Big Lebowski or Ice Age can be found on the site.

However, neither content nor brand names, are enough to gain global market share. As Hulu still remained a close system and only available to the U.S. users, it will not gain any attention of the users outside of the U.S. In this scenario, users will always support the video platform that they are allowed to access and they’re comfortable with. Even this site has the most attractive selections and variety of titles, this is not ensure that they will have the competitive offerings.

via [AP]

The blogosphere has speculated that Quarterlife might not have a long life on NBC. This is particularly attributed to the size of the audience on Tuesday night, happened to be only 3.8 million viewers in the 10pm TV slot, ranked third behind Jericho that debut on CBS, and Primetime: What Would You Do Now? that debut on ABC. If you watch the shows available on Quarterlife’s site through the Internet, you won’t know the estimated statistics other than Quarterlife or any Web measurement firm released it. At this point, I’m not sure that the poor figures did help Quarterlife in getting more buzz. However, it is certainly Quarterlife has made their name well-known for its sluggish start from Internet to the television network.

Ironically, Quarterlife has made their name first known to the public with the TV debut strategy by firstly premiered on MySpaceTV. The pace of growth continues to accelerate with the TV crowd, predicting that it will eventually make it on dual PC community and TV world. Unfortunately, results often speak louder than the ambition. Apparently, Quarterlife will not give up easily, they have launched their own social networking site, but it’s still believed to be too complex for ordinary users. I’ll expect only a certain number of people that want to upload their user-generated content would eagerly to join and actively involved in Quarterlife’s social network activities.

Will the Reuters comment on Quarterlife, i.e. worst time-period performance in at least 17 years scare out some of the Internet firms that want to follow the same path, i.e. from Internet to TV? However, it doesn’t stop the sheer number of opportunities for these type of firms as the Internet has shifted to a mainstream media delivery platform. With or without NBC’s slot, I think Quarterlife will survive if they have a group of producers constantly produce high-quality video clips that live up to the demand of the viewers. Temporarily, it seem that they have.

via [The New York Times]

Today Reuters ran an interesting story entitled, “NBC Universal removes YouTube channel,” in an attempt to make way for Hulu, expected to launch at the end of this month. Hulu, a joint venture of NBC and News corp. has been widely regarded as a YouTube strong competitor even it is still not officially goes live at this moment. It would served as a more flexible platform that stocked with movies, TV episodes, and of course the entertainment content from these two successful media companies. Given the brand name of NBC and News Corp., it is common sense to assume that it will attract some well-known partners when it is fully launched in the market.

Hulu, though still in private beta, you can go to their landing page and submit your email address in order to get the invitation.

MSNBC.com, a news site started by Microsoft and NBC has acquired Newsvine for an undisclosed sum. This is the first acquisition of MSNBC.com in its 11-year history. The Seattle-based Newsvine, currently has only six (6) employees, will remain independent; even so Newsvine has officially became part of the MSNBC.com family.

Until today, Newsvine continue to remain competitive in the market by target their segment markets with readership purity by spreading the idea that known as participatory journalism. The news that appeared on Newsvine site produced by the Newsviners, were more responsive to the information needs of their readers. From a business perspective, the acquisition established a win-win situation for both MSNBC.com and Newsvine. MSNBC.com was apparently exploring a new venture and trying to expand its market by combining the resources that Newsvine developed. In other word, an augmentation strategy that helped them cater to a bigger and different type of readers. Not only this acquisition will make MSNBC.com to be fully competitive in the market, they will become an increasingly authoritative with more news and more sources they got now. For Newsvine, they also can add more staff and develop better content. Moreover, Newsvine’s site will move to the same world-class data centers that house MSNBC.com, according to the Newsvine blog.