Social Media Audit – Is Hulu the King of Content? (Examining Online Video Distribution)

ONLINE VIDEO DISTRIBUTION – INDUSTRY SOCIAL MEDIA AUDIT

SUMMARY

This social media audit highlights online conversations relevant to the online video industry from January 2009 to October 2009. The data summarizes coverage behavior within influential blogs regarding online video brands in relation to one another. The overall industry is explored, followed by a closer look at conversations on the individual brands themselves. All metrics included in this report were recorded on 15 October 2009.

The following brands are examined in this report:

- Hulu

- Crackle

- TV.com

- YouTube

INDUSTRY

As online video distribution rises in both popularity and profitability, traditional media distributors have, in the past year, initiated ventures into new partnerships and platforms to keep up with the trend.

The ever popular, Hulu, governed by NBC, Fox and ABC continues to threaten traditional network television. With CBS’s TV.com and YouTube’s partnership with Sony’s Crackle, network presence online has become increasingly apparent. Finally, geolocation tracking on Hulu prevents those outside of the US from accessing its contents, giving an additional edge to sites like YouTube.

In June, Editor-in-Chief of ZDNet, Larry Dignan commented on the growth of online video by saying that, “Internet TV viewing appears to be a ‘second screen experience’ as 74 percent of consumers view content on their computer monitors without connecting to the TV. In other words, Internet TV doesn’t supplant the traditional stuff.”^[1] He additionally cites Hulu as the biggest legitimate threat to the cable distribution model.
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