Hulu Time Machine -- Today & Yesterday (When First Announced in March 2007)

Online video leader Hulu -- which features primarily premium TV programming -- just announced important metrics for the first time, including: (1) 2010 revenues will reach $240 million (more than double its $108 million take in 2009); (2) 41% of every $1 generated by video content is ad-driven, whereas 30% is subscription-based; and (3) the service now streams 260 million non-advertising videos from 235 content partners.

Sounds pretty good but, of course: (1) $240 million revenues is only a drop-in-the-bucket for the major media companies (i.e., certainly not setting the world on fire); and (2) the service continues to suffer from schizophrenia caused by being owned in significant part by cable operator Comcast (read more here), which has no desire to see Internet TV (i.e., over-the-top distribution) win the day -- for this reason, Hulu's content offerings still are very limited in the scheme of things.

That is the current "State of the Union" for Hulu.

What was "then"?

I looked back at my initial blog post about the then un-named Hulu back in March 2007 when the overall concept and project was first announced. Click this link to read my first impressions. Among my thoughts at the time, I continue to believe in the power of "personal video" -- especially now with the explosion caused by "anytime, anywhere" mobile HD video capture. I just blogged about this yesterday.