Bra, WTF is Hulu?

STREET CRED
My dad is kamaaina. This means that when tourists in Waikiki pay $8 for a drink at a bar, I pay half that. It means I can eat carbs as a cultural choice. It means that a loco moco is breakfast and not baby talk for "train".

HULU
So from what I understand, Hulu means "hair" or body covering. I am absolutely sure that it means "hair" because all the Japanese Hawaiians make fun of the Okinawan Hawaiians (me included) calling us names like monkey and "huluhulu". According to Center Networks, hulu also means "plummage".

NBC & NEWS CORP.
NBC and News Corp. just announced "Hulu" as the name of their online video effort set to debut in Oct. 2007. Flanked on all sides by Conan O'Brien, American Dad, 24 and Mad TV graphics, the sign-up page encourages users to request an invite to the beta release.

Formerly the Senior Vice President for Worldwide Application Software at Amazon, Hulu CEO Jason Kilar was hired on in late June to take the reins of what NBC and News Corp. call a "groundbreaking achievement." While the public is left in the dark about what the service actually provides, one thing is certain, with distribution partners AOL, CNET, Comcast, MSN, MySpace, and Yahoo, Hulu is already the hottest debutante at the ball.

AN EDUCATED GUESS

An interview featuring Scott Zakarin of "The Spot"

In 1995, Scott Zakarin created "The Spot" an online episodic series that allowed a community of internet users to suggest plot lines in a choose-your-own-adventure style scenario. Nevertheless, this was 1995. That's like 900 years ago in internet time. Streaming video was a tadpole in the womb of technology. People were logging in (using dial up - eww) by the thousands to get 5 webby kids in a Santa Monica house to update their blogs and photo uploads. Eventually Zakarin's company got bought out by AOL and Brandon Tartikoff signed on to help with production. However, streaming video never materialized quickly enough for Zakarin and the dotcom bust sealed the coffin on "The Spot".

I suspect Hulu is the second dotcom boom's effort to put television on the internet. Sure, there's plenty of TV content on Youtube, Video Egg, Sidereel and Stage 6, but this will be licensed (not that many viewers care about that) and it will likely be in high definition. I hope that user dialogue and creativity will be encouraged, but I fear the worst given NBC's track record with copyright battles. Let's hope Jason Kilar considers the spirit of Aloha when building this community (minus the spam).

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