TV on the Internet

When a friend of mine from another marketing company asked me what I thought of Fancast I thought it was just another Hulu.com. But being the curious type, of course I would take a look around. What I was trying to find was a reason to visit this new site over Hulu. I found a couple of reasons for why this might be a nice way to go about watching TV on the internet:

• The search function also yields results like actor bios and lists the content they’ve got on site (instead of linking out) for that particular search.
• Discovery Channel.  Nice.  And we all know how I feel about the Discovery Channel.
• Movie Trailers.  Ok, now we’re getting somewhere!
• Blogs?  Really?  Okay, it’s always nice to get a second opinion, and even though I do already get a lot of this info from other bloggers who I read regularly anyway, this is a nice little flavor to have while you’re loading videos.  Also, it looks like they are using the WordPress platform, and that puts me right at home.
• None of this signing in nonsense that Hulu makes you do if you regularly clear your cookies.

It’s not until I started actually watching an episode of something that I saw a familiar logo and I realized, “Oh, it’s not a competitor with Hulu – it’s a partner, so that means they’ve got Hulu stuff and some other crap.”  I think it’s a good move on their part in catering to the “I’ll watch something when I have time for it” culture we live in now, but I also wonder how Hulu feels about this partnership.

If I were any site that syndicates content like Hulu, I’d probably realize very quickly that it’s in everyone’s best interests to get that content in as many places as possible.  More views = more metrics = better ROI if you’re an ad buyer = more money if you’re Hulu. So, good for Fancast for helping to add volume to the echo chamber.  And from the consumer side of things, it’s nice to just have everything in as many places as you can, especially in the case that one breaks down. And it’s not like re-purposing copyrighted video is going to stop people from re-purposing stuff, so why not take credit for putting it out there? Especially when that’s an opportunity to get people to take a look at an ad?  And bragging rights for being forward-thinking?

For us consumers, it doesn’t matter how it gets to us, as long as we get to watch it.  Right?

And as final test of functionality, does this new site let me embed videos?  Let’s find out:

So, would I use this site over Hulu?  If I had heard about it before Hulu, definitely.  But for now, there isn’t all that much of a difference for my purposes. However, if I visit Fancast, and the video that I’m watching is then hosted by Hulu, don’t they both win?

I’m going to do it that way from now on and see how it works out.

That aside… does anyone want to see the movie (above) with me?

Tags: entertainment, fancast, hulu, Internet, movies, streaming, television, tv, video
Filed Under: Internet, Marketeering, Random, Research & Development