Hulu finally comes to Apple TV; is the social web IPO window closed?
YouTube to double down on its ‘channel’ experiment [THE WALL STREET JOURNAL]
The company says it will put in another $200 million to market the channels as it attempts to upgrade its content from simple user-generated videos and to lure more viewers and advertising. The site has launched nearly 100 new channels so far this year, attracting talent such as actor Amy Poehler to create or star in original episodes in an effort to draw new audiences—and blue-chip advertisers.
Hulu, Apple finally get it together: Hulu Plus comes to Apple TV, lets you subscribe with iTunes [ALLTHINGD]
Like Apple’s deal with Netflix, Hulu Plus is integrated directly into Apple’s iTunes store, which means that if you aren’t a Hulu Plus subscriber, you can sign up using your iTunes account, and Hulu will bill you via Apple. Presumably this means that just like it does with Netflix, Apple will keep a portion of Hulu’s monthly fee. And from what I can tell, just Netflix, Hulu won’t let you use iTunes to sign up for the service via a different Apple device, like an iPad or iPhone — if you’re going that route, you’ll still need to visit to Hulu.com.
Social media are giving a voice to taste buds [THE NEW YORK TIMES]
While consumers may think of social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare as places to post musings and interact with friends, companies like Wal-Mart and Samuel Adams are turning them into extensions of market research departments. And companies are just beginning to figure out how to use the enormous amount of information available.
The social web IPO window is now closed [GIGAOM VIA BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK]
This isn’t how things were supposed to unfold with Facebook’s IPO. The social network’s public offering was supposed to be a once-in-a-lifetime moonshot, triggering a frenzy of interest in other social-web companies that would then ride that wave of demand to equally successful IPOs. At least, that’s what plenty of venture investors seemed to be thinking as they pushed up the private-market valuations of Facebook—which was supposedly worth $100 billion not long ago—and every other company with a social component, including Twitter.
