Hulu, Facebook, Killer Apps like Twitter

Is it fun, easy, eventful, and jump on the bandwagon gotta have it kind of stuff? Does it go on my Facebook page? The answers to these questions must be yes in order for the next interactive product to make noise or undermine the conventional wisdom that says their is no new new. Twitter did it. Facebook, with it 5,000 apps and counting is the backdrop, and if you're not a product on the Facebook platform....well you'll have to go to the big Google meeting in Mountain View, CA. Or you can go anyway because you'll want to be on this new Open Social platform too.

Are you a portal like Hulu? Forget about traction. You're too big, too repeatable, too similar, not stealthy, and not new. Then again, you might just have an HD video experience that has never been seen before, a decent round of funding to expand that experience and the content from two of the biggest suppliers in the hemisphere. But wait. I can watch Friday Night Lights on NBC.com and it works fine. But NBC.com doesn't have Conan the Barbarian. They do have Conan O'Brien. I'm so confused! But maybe that was Hulu's intention all along. For now, Joost has Showtime's Dexter for free and they're not pushing any adds down my throat (CBS might change all of that if the Writer's Strike persists in 2008), so that might be my video platform of choice for now, but I'm nomadic and so I'm sure I won't have many reasons to stay loyal (guess what Joost, your newsletters aren't really wetting my appetite to load your client on another computer). My guess is VeohTV, Joost, The CBS Audience Network that helps populate their platforms has a preeetty nice jump on Hulu by the way. Time will tell. Meanwhile, the web is getting more and more social. Are you?