Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Yahoo submits bid for Hulu

allthingsd.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 173 posts

Re: Yahoo submits bid for Hulu

#31

Post by glhaynes »

criley wrote: post #26
bernardom wrote: post #6

Holy cow. This is a big deal . There is no reason why TV networks need to exist the way they do. Hulu, Netflix and Amazon all produce original content and are perfectly positioned to disrupt them as their distribution volume increases. Even the current distribution channel is being disrupted by Aereo. Hulu is a a huge asset. If Yahoo gets in this game, they have a massive number of users, photos (flickr), blogposts (…

> Hulu, Netflix and Amazon all produce original content and are perfectly positioned to disrupt them as their distribution volume increases. Uhh, as a Hulu subscriber, I'll just let you know: If I only had "Hulu" content to pick from, I'd cancel my subscription immediately. It's not great stuff, barely worth paying for and CERTAINLY not worth both paying for and sitting through the same 4 advertisements over-and-over…

sitting through the same 4 advertisements over-and-over-and-over again for

What is it I don't understand about the online video business that causes this to happen? They can't get enough advertisements from their partners to allow them to be less repetitive? Advertisers don't want to provide variety? (Maybe advertisers specifically want the monotony? Surely not, else they'd follow the same scheme on network TV.) The endless repetition sucks to watch and it makes the whole thing seem amateurish.

Re: Yahoo submits bid for Hulu

#32

Post by marcamillion »

Wow....I feel like I am watching a brilliant game of chess. Marissa Mayer is increasingly showing her genius.

It is clear that she understands that Yahoo is a New Media company. They serve assets to many eyeballs and monetize those assets.

It seems that in her case, their main goal is grab up as much quality inventory as she can, and monetize the hell out of it.

As their media inventory gets bigger, economies of scale start to kick in. Nike may not want to just advertise on Yahoo & Flickr, but they would be damned if they turn away the potential to reach audiences in Yahoo, Flickr, Tumblr, and now possibly Hulu. Plus I imagine that the more inventory they hold, is the more they can package that inventory to increase the unit price for all properties.

Holy crap....this is brilliant and yet so obvious. Why have other CEOs not grasped this and executed on it the way Mayer is.

I think this is the one of the few cases, in Corporate America, where going on an M&A spree makes the most sense.

Another thing is the more properties she buys, and the better deals she does is the easier it is to buy other deals. Startups loved being bought by Google because YouTube was bought by Google. The same thing is starting to happen. Yahoo! bought Tumblr, so other companies are going to feel comfortable being bought by Yahoo! and that will create more deal flow, resulting in more deals.

Hrmmm...I wonder how much cash Yahoo has on their balance sheet - either way, I am sure they can raise a ton of money to do more deals.

WoW....just WOW!!!!

Re: Yahoo submits bid for Hulu

#33

Post by bernardom »

criley wrote: post #26
bernardom wrote: post #6

Holy cow. This is a big deal . There is no reason why TV networks need to exist the way they do. Hulu, Netflix and Amazon all produce original content and are perfectly positioned to disrupt them as their distribution volume increases. Even the current distribution channel is being disrupted by Aereo. Hulu is a a huge asset. If Yahoo gets in this game, they have a massive number of users, photos (flickr), blogposts (…

> Hulu, Netflix and Amazon all produce original content and are perfectly positioned to disrupt them as their distribution volume increases. Uhh, as a Hulu subscriber, I'll just let you know: If I only had "Hulu" content to pick from, I'd cancel my subscription immediately. It's not great stuff, barely worth paying for and CERTAINLY not worth both paying for and sitting through the same 4 advertisements over-and-over…

No, no, no. That's not what I meant, sorry if it wasn't clear.

The point isn't that they're buying Hulu for its original programming. It's that if they want to become a major player in the original content space, they'll need a huge user base to start with. For that, they need licensed content.

In other words, my thesis is that TV networks can be disrupted by someone else making original content and distributing it over the web, but the disruptor will need a big number of users to make this possible. It's much easier to get that big user base with licensed content.

Whether it makes sense for Yahoo to be in the studio and production business is another question!

Re: Yahoo submits bid for Hulu

#35

Post by FuzzyDunlop »

pvnick wrote: post #21
nolok wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They tried to buy a majority share from dailymotion from Orange a couple of weeks ago, but it was blocked by the french governement (a big shareholder in Orange). Yahoo really wants a video service. I guess they want to come back to having a modern set of active services.

>but it was blocked by the french governement Governments screw everything up

They were probably right on the money considering Yahoo's reputation.

Re: Yahoo submits bid for Hulu

#36

Post by aluhut »

criley wrote: post #26
bernardom wrote: post #6

Holy cow. This is a big deal . There is no reason why TV networks need to exist the way they do. Hulu, Netflix and Amazon all produce original content and are perfectly positioned to disrupt them as their distribution volume increases. Even the current distribution channel is being disrupted by Aereo. Hulu is a a huge asset. If Yahoo gets in this game, they have a massive number of users, photos (flickr), blogposts (…

> Hulu, Netflix and Amazon all produce original content and are perfectly positioned to disrupt them as their distribution volume increases. Uhh, as a Hulu subscriber, I'll just let you know: If I only had "Hulu" content to pick from, I'd cancel my subscription immediately. It's not great stuff, barely worth paying for and CERTAINLY not worth both paying for and sitting through the same 4 advertisements over-and-over…

House of Cards is great though.

Re: Yahoo submits bid for Hulu

#37

Post by mtgx »

gcb0 wrote: post #5

whoever buys Hulu is going to regret when they find out all the content deals goes up in smoke when the company change hands.

That's why Google didn't want it, even though they were willing to pay twice as much as Yahoo and Amazon the last time around. But the networks wouldn't give them the contract length they wanted.

Re: Yahoo submits bid for Hulu

#39

Post by criley »

aluhut wrote: post #36
criley wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hulu, Netflix and Amazon all produce original content and are perfectly positioned to disrupt them as their distribution volume increases. Uhh, as a Hulu subscriber, I'll just let you know: If I only had "Hulu" content to pick from, I'd cancel my subscription immediately. It's not great stuff, barely worth paying for and CERTAINLY not worth both paying for and sitting through the same 4 advertisements over-and-over…

House of Cards is great though.

Yep, I love Netflix and loved every second of House of Cards! Although I have the opposite issue with Netflix. Lack of constantly added content makes their library feel stale at times, while every time I hit hulu.com it pops up with a list of shows with a "NEW EPISODE!" badge. Keeps you going back!

Re: Yahoo submits bid for Hulu

#40

Post by untog »

glhaynes wrote: post #31
criley wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hulu, Netflix and Amazon all produce original content and are perfectly positioned to disrupt them as their distribution volume increases. Uhh, as a Hulu subscriber, I'll just let you know: If I only had "Hulu" content to pick from, I'd cancel my subscription immediately. It's not great stuff, barely worth paying for and CERTAINLY not worth both paying for and sitting through the same 4 advertisements over-and-over…

sitting through the same 4 advertisements over-and-over-and-over again for What is it I don't understand about the online video business that causes this to happen? They can't get enough advertisements from their partners to allow them to be less repetitive? Advertisers don't want to provide variety? (Maybe advertisers specifically want the monotony? Surely not, else they'd follow the same scheme on network TV.) The…

I think this might be one of the areas that Yahoo could really help. They've got a lot of advertising experience, and would hopefully improve Hulu's ad performance.

Both Hulu and Tumblr have proved that ads can work in their product, but haven't really brought them to any meaningful scale. Maybe that's what attracts Yahoo to them?

Post reply on HN