Hulu vs. Joost has nothing to do with tech and everything with brand

There is a lot of buzz this morning surrounding the announcement the Hulu is becoming more and more like a network site (e.g., social features around a particular show). But make no mistake, what Hulu is doing is continuing work to create the brand for distribution and aggregation of professional online content.

Hulu's position as a strong brand is important because they are not a leader in the following areas:
- Quality of the video experience
- Content library (it is wide horizontally, but within each series it is generally shallow)
- Features of the video player
- Opportunity to download/ port content to a device
- Internationally accessibility

This puts other competitors at an interesting intersection because they must overcome the strength of the Hulu brand to attract viewers. The easiest comparision is made to Joost, who originally launched with a plug in and now seem hell beant on blaming the plug in for their failed launch. Joost's failure had absolutely nothing to do with technology and instead can be squarely blamed on a lack of consumer understanding of 1) why go to Joost and 2) why download the software. If people knew why to go to Joost (exclusive content, high quality experience, differentiation) they would download the software. It. Is. That. Simple.

The dynamic that many video startups will find themselves in is that as the Hulu brand gains wide adoptance they will be challenged to create a compelling story to pull users away unless they themselves (like Hulu) have exclusive content rights. I'd suggest that startups should look to obscure international sports, live events, "second tier" content (ala Revision3), and other outlets to build an audience.

I'd predict that Joost will soon go away, but the real competition for Hulu remains Fox.com, NBC.com, and the remaining Broadcast Supported Digital P&Ls.