Hulu CEO: "We screwed up royally"(37signals.com)
37signals.com
Hulu CEO: "We screwed up royally"
http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1534-hulu-ceo-we-screwed-up-royally
10 comments
It's a follow-up to their recent post on this subject: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1528-the-bullshit-of-outage-l... (posted here as http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=432737).
Because more people read 37signals than read the Hulu blog. This is how I came across the message, too. And some people use the HN autosubmit bookmarklet for fast posting.
is it just me getting this feeling lately or 37 signals is trying to spam HN
Is it 37 who's spamming HN, or is it their fanbois?
This seems to go in phases... First TechCrunch spam, then anything Zed Posts, now anything 37s posts.
It's been anything 37s posts for months and months. HN is practically an RSS feed for the 37s blog...
The other day there were 4 37signals posts on the top page here. I think one is more than enough usually...
It seems "ClownCo" isn't quite turning out like we expected. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5972
No joke. I love Hulu, and when I found out it was just a joint venture I was kind of surprised. It really is a great substitute for traditional TV.
Note that he didn't just say the right things; they backed it up with actions. They got the eps re-added for two weeks to provide notice.
And took full responsibility instead of shedding the blame on others. Talk about defying expectations, Hulu is incredible.
From what I've seen of Jason Kilar he seems like a damn good CEO. Totally excellent candidate for a Founders at Work II interview.
Agreed. He was my vote for the CEO Crunchies Award. Just because someone has a good product is one factor, but I think this guy handles himself like CEOs should.
Zuckerberg winning that award was a partial contribution to the incredibly laughable nature of that entire production.
Can you point to any mistakes he's made? He seems to me to have done a remarkably good job.
Besides Beacon, he seems to interview pretty poorly, Facebook is still hemorrhaging money so he hasn't managed the whole "profitability" thing, and there's the whole ConnectU fiasco to name a few. Considering the fact that he's 24 and running a place like FB, I think he's done a good job all things considered, but the award was for "Best Startup CEO" not "Best Startup CEO who is still young so doesn't really know he is doing, but is doing pretty well in spite of his lack of experience."
Because that would be way too long for Om Malik to say remotely coherently.
(P.S. I think I would make an awful CEO of FB, but I also think there are far more competent Startup CEOs out there than Zuckerberg, it just so happens he gets a ton of press, which means it makes sense that he would win an award that is determined by a mass of mouth-breathing, TC-reading publics. Sort of like how it makes sense the Twitter founders won "Best Founders" since, apparently, any press is good press, even press that constantly points out how incompetent you are.)
Because that would be way too long for Om Malik to say remotely coherently.
(P.S. I think I would make an awful CEO of FB, but I also think there are far more competent Startup CEOs out there than Zuckerberg, it just so happens he gets a ton of press, which means it makes sense that he would win an award that is determined by a mass of mouth-breathing, TC-reading publics. Sort of like how it makes sense the Twitter founders won "Best Founders" since, apparently, any press is good press, even press that constantly points out how incompetent you are.)
It's not necessarily a mistake to focus on growth instead of revenue, especially in the business they're in. It was certainly right to focus on growth initially. At some point there is presumably a threshold where revenue becomes more important. Are you sure you know better than Zuckerberg where that threshold is?
I'm not. I wouldn't want to bet their strategy has been optimal, but I wouldn't want to bet against it either. At the (very coarse) precision at which I can judge, their strategy seems optimal. Can you judge with finer precision?
I'm not. I wouldn't want to bet their strategy has been optimal, but I wouldn't want to bet against it either. At the (very coarse) precision at which I can judge, their strategy seems optimal. Can you judge with finer precision?
If I had a 150MM users, I'd start worrying more about how to monetize them than I would about getting more. Facebook has been around 5 years, has taken over 500MM in funding and still requires a yearly influx of investor capital to keep running. To me, that signifies a problem (or, if not a problem, at least an early warning bell). I cannot judge with any finer precision, but from my perspective the strategy is no longer optimal.
I suppose sometime within the next decade we'll find out who was right. Although, given the choice, I will pretty much always bet against a bread-and-butter social network like FB. Statistically it's a really safe bet.
I suppose sometime within the next decade we'll find out who was right. Although, given the choice, I will pretty much always bet against a bread-and-butter social network like FB. Statistically it's a really safe bet.
In a market where there's a tendency toward centralization, what matters is the percentage of users you have, not the absolute number. Facebook only passed Myspace in traffic last month. Surely it's at least reasonable to believe the threshold for when to put revenue first might be in the future.
Do you have to be the #1 in a sector to make a lot of money though?
Plentyoffish has just overtaken match as top dating site in the US - some parallels with facebook. Difference is, plentyoffish has been massively profitable for years... Why hasn't facebook? Do they need 10,000+ servers and all those staff? The big fancy expensive offices?
Facebook seems like a tech bubble in itself to me.
Plentyoffish has just overtaken match as top dating site in the US - some parallels with facebook. Difference is, plentyoffish has been massively profitable for years... Why hasn't facebook? Do they need 10,000+ servers and all those staff? The big fancy expensive offices?
Facebook seems like a tech bubble in itself to me.
Zuckerberg is taking the road less traveled. Most sane people would have cashed out $100MM and walked away as soon as they could have. I would have.
He's trying to turn Facebook into a billion+/year revenue company by utilizing an as of yet proven (or identified?) business model.
Worst case scenario is that he could do what MySpace did. Put horrible ads all over the site and milk it for everything it's worth. Should turn profit if they then cut back on spending (and fire 80% of their staff).
He's trying to turn Facebook into a billion+/year revenue company by utilizing an as of yet proven (or identified?) business model.
Worst case scenario is that he could do what MySpace did. Put horrible ads all over the site and milk it for everything it's worth. Should turn profit if they then cut back on spending (and fire 80% of their staff).
"Everything it's worth" being the sum total of office supply costs for Fox last fiscal year.
The Beacon advertising fiasco comes to mind...
Releasing features users don't like is not necessarily a mistake. You can never tell for sure whether users will like something till you release it. So the optimal plan for a startup is to keep releasing new stuff, and when something sucks, admit it fairly quickly. Which I believe is what they did.
How hard is it to create a startup when you have all the premium content on TV at your disposal?
Excellent point. In many ways I think the networks get a bit too much credit for Hulu.
I thought a bit about it think and I think the accolades are largely because people didn't expect much after the fiascos of the RIAA and the MPAA. How many of us here expected the networks to be able to embrace, adapt, and deliver like they did with Hulu? I know I sure didn't.
Sure many readers here could've built something equivalent or better given rights to the content and half the capital injection but IMO the networks still deserve recognition for Hulu.
I thought a bit about it think and I think the accolades are largely because people didn't expect much after the fiascos of the RIAA and the MPAA. How many of us here expected the networks to be able to embrace, adapt, and deliver like they did with Hulu? I know I sure didn't.
Sure many readers here could've built something equivalent or better given rights to the content and half the capital injection but IMO the networks still deserve recognition for Hulu.
I think Hulu did great in this situation. It's not like they have said they would keep episodes of shows up forever, shows get removed a lot. FX wanted the show off, so they basically had to take the show off.The only bad point was originally they would have lost credibilty as a reliable place to watch shows, but the notice and addition of the show for another two weeks show they are taking this seriously. Hulu has earned some of my respect, I'm impressed.
It's funny that 37s thought the apology letter was great because it violated some of the principles they laid out for good apologies.
They even got two episodes added back that weren't there before (The Gang Gets Whacked, pts. 1 & 2). Sweet.
I'm sorry, but I think everyone is missing the point. Why is Hulu removing content from their site at all? We live in the age of practical infinite storage and effectual infinite bandwidth. I wonder if any of these people have read about the long tail. Even though the economics of the LT are still being debated, there is absolutely no valid argument to be made about removing content from your service that has already been made available. For instance, I have been listening to tech podcasts at ITconversations for years and have even been an occasional editor. They have a system that rebuilds their entire collection of shows multiple times per month with new audio ads/sponsors. They are a much smaller business than something like Hulu and have built a dynamic infrastructure that works very well. Hulu can slap updated ads onto their shows much easier than that because it's all flash based. So why are they removing content at all? That is the question AND the point, not whether or not they have a proactive and apologetic CEO.
They're removing it because the people that created the TV show want it removed. Those people are the ones with rights to the content.
They also remove The Daily Show after two weeks, because Comedy Central wants to archive it on their own show. They have that right as content owners.
So I get that you don't like that, but it's their right, and the fact is that Hulu's so good because they work well with others.
They also remove The Daily Show after two weeks, because Comedy Central wants to archive it on their own show. They have that right as content owners.
So I get that you don't like that, but it's their right, and the fact is that Hulu's so good because they work well with others.
The real problem is that the whole concept of "release windows" is confusing and frustrating. Better explanations won't fix it.
Yeah. I don't think Hulu is the end-all be-all of online TV. It's just the best we've seen to date.
Them giving dates (on The Daily Show it says "This will only be here for 5 more days") seems to work pretty well, though.
Them giving dates (on The Daily Show it says "This will only be here for 5 more days") seems to work pretty well, though.
How about TV, where the release window is "while it airs"?
TV has physical limits; they can't broadcast every episode of every show whenever people want to watch it. The Internet doesn't have those limits; the whole point of Hulu is that it should inherit the benefits of the Internet.
That doesn't negate my argument though. Hulu is a creation of major content owners getting together and agreeing to put their content in one place and to run advertisements against it. The problem is that the same content owners who agree to put their content up for a limited time are also not getting the full picture of how things have changed in the last few years. The methods for distribution have changed. The content creators no longer have sole control over the distribution medium, like original tv and radio broadcasting stations.
The first major break in that decades old paradigm was the wide-spread growth of cable networks. This opened up more viewing opportunities and made room for new networks. Comedy Central itself is an example of this. The major networks, ABC, NBC, and CBS fought against cable pretty heavily in the beginning. Then they finally caught on and that has been their primary broadcast medium for the last 20-30 years. Now its happened again, and this time not only are the old networks being reactionary, so are the same cable networks that sprouted up as cable tv spread around. This time distribution is online and essentially worldwide. The content owners are now treating their own websites and services like channels and tv stations. They want to make the audience come to them in order to get access to content. They have yet to catch on that this will fail too.
The audience, us, will get content wherever we want it. A lot of us download via filesharing and p2p sites. Some of us buy via services like Amazon and iTunes. Most of us still watch TV, but more and more of us have DVRs and choose to skip over commercials. We will watch content how and where we want. The rules of the new paradigm basically mean that content is no longer packageable. You can't wrap it up in a tape or disk, lock it into a channel, or lock it down to a website. The audience is no longer vertical, but has instead gotten much wider and deeper. If you want to make money from the content you produce, you have to spread it out to every distribution method where you can get some kind of incremental revenue from it. Instead of having your content on your one station or website, keep it there and also push it out to Hulu, TV.com, iTunes, Amazon, Xbox Live, and wherever else you can push it to. Don't remove your content from certain services as an artificial mechanism to try to direct where your audience goes to get it. All you end up doing is alienating your fans and turning them off.
The first major break in that decades old paradigm was the wide-spread growth of cable networks. This opened up more viewing opportunities and made room for new networks. Comedy Central itself is an example of this. The major networks, ABC, NBC, and CBS fought against cable pretty heavily in the beginning. Then they finally caught on and that has been their primary broadcast medium for the last 20-30 years. Now its happened again, and this time not only are the old networks being reactionary, so are the same cable networks that sprouted up as cable tv spread around. This time distribution is online and essentially worldwide. The content owners are now treating their own websites and services like channels and tv stations. They want to make the audience come to them in order to get access to content. They have yet to catch on that this will fail too.
The audience, us, will get content wherever we want it. A lot of us download via filesharing and p2p sites. Some of us buy via services like Amazon and iTunes. Most of us still watch TV, but more and more of us have DVRs and choose to skip over commercials. We will watch content how and where we want. The rules of the new paradigm basically mean that content is no longer packageable. You can't wrap it up in a tape or disk, lock it into a channel, or lock it down to a website. The audience is no longer vertical, but has instead gotten much wider and deeper. If you want to make money from the content you produce, you have to spread it out to every distribution method where you can get some kind of incremental revenue from it. Instead of having your content on your one station or website, keep it there and also push it out to Hulu, TV.com, iTunes, Amazon, Xbox Live, and wherever else you can push it to. Don't remove your content from certain services as an artificial mechanism to try to direct where your audience goes to get it. All you end up doing is alienating your fans and turning them off.
I agree with you that Hulu is not perfect. They should really keep the episodes on forever, especially since they are available 24/7 for download via Amazon,iTunes, or p2p. The networks haven't realized that they are losing control of content distribution. But I think this shows that Hulu has a decent idea of whats going on and is doing what it can in this situation to compete.
Yeah. I agree with you: I think it ought to be distributed widely and efficiently. But I understand it from the point of view from the content providers/DVD salesmen.
I like that Hulu's playing it fair. I'd like to hope that they'll become more and more open as time goes on, or that somebody else does.
I like that Hulu's playing it fair. I'd like to hope that they'll become more and more open as time goes on, or that somebody else does.
You need to hit return twice to start a new paragraph.
I understand people respect 37s here for whatever reason, but sometimes the linking is just ridiculous. This has nothing to do with 37s...