Yahoo! in early talks with Hulu

http://www.digitaltveurope.net/53891/yahoo-in-early-talks-with-hulu/

 

No surprise there at all. I've mentioned in a few posts that I didn't see Hulu as it is now, lasting a long time. Yahoo right now just acquired exclusive rights to classic SNL (Saturday Night Live for those of you who don't know) for a time. This Hulu offer could be a sign that Yahoo is wanting to get back into media, which it did well with in the past with Yahoo Music.

500 million is a heck of a risk though for a fading company like Yahoo on a business like streaming media that has a lot of players already and has no guarantees to survive.

 

Yes you were hinting a bit about this in the Netflix thread But then since I don't use either Hulu or Netflix, I can't say if it's good that Yahoo may be taking over Hulu instead of letting it die out, or how to put it. Time will tell, but from what I have read Hulu needs to improve big time to be able to compete with the other services. And if Yahoo knows what needs to be done, then that's a good take over I guess

 

They all need to improve if the streaming services want to survive past the decade. It is not a sustainable business in its current form. Anyway, Hulu users have been increasingly put off by the excessive advertising, and rightly so. I've watched regular TV in sessions that included less advertising. Hulu is also severely lacking outside of TV show streaming. Its movie selection could be accurately described as eccentric at best.

Yahoo knowing what needs to be done is the million dollar question. If they do, the risk is lessened perhaps, but there nonetheless. But if this isn't planned properly and is simply a "We need something to stop Wall Street and the world laughing at us" move, it may hasten their end. With Gmail around and Outlook.com becoming as good as it has, they can't even guarantee that their mail service will keep them afloat. Obviously they have some cash in the till, or they wouldn't be dreaming of this.

 

Yeah money talks I thought about it, that the competition will be even harder when/if Apple starts their "TV service" or releases their "iTV". I guess it will be a streaming service similar to the once we already have, but with an Apple touch, so the competition will not go away anytime soon. Hopefully Yahoo! has a well designed future plan for Hulu if they go through with the purchase

 

http://www.digitaltveurope.net/56772/time-warner-cable-eyes-hulu-stake/

 

Well, there goes any hope of Hulu changing for the better. At least Yahoo might have thought up something different. Now it'll just be another telecommunications giant getting involved with it, more worried about the money than the experience. Honestly with that many media giant co-owners, it's not all that surprising the service is a joke. Too many old-school corporate fat cats running the show.

 

http://www.digitaltveurope.net/56981/directv-the-latest-company-linked-to-hulu/

 

I see Yeah Yahoo! feels like the more exciting company with younger blood in it, but Yahoo! recently bought Thumblr so the question is if they really are willing to spend some more money on Hulu as well.

 

Hmm, I gotta disagree with you there. To me, and only my opinion of course, Yahoo seems lately more like a chicken running around with its head cut off, or, perhaps more accurately, like a captain of a ship filling with water, dumbfounded at the position they're in and trying desperately to figure out how to keep the thing above water or at least get out alive. I'm not sure Marissa is going to work out as well as was hoped. Tumblr is a risky purchase, but Yahoo can't play it too safe either. One thing is nearly guaranteed to happen with the purchase, the porn content will drop like rock.

 

What I meant was that I agreed with you that Yahoo! would be a better buyer than Time Warner taking over. . And I agree that the Thumblr purchase is very risk, I don't really get what the "thing" is about Thumblr.

 

Ahh, my bad Tumblr is a hot site at the moment as far as users are concerned, but social sites have become a dime a dozen and, it's also a blog site, like there aren't enough of those as it is. Profitability is another question mark..there hasn't been any and now Yahoo has spent over a billion dollars of it's own money (a move that had to have made some accountant of theirs pull out the Rosary Beads) to figure out how to make it profitable. When the CEO has to chime in to say "We promise not to screw it up.", it makes one leery.

The very first, easy way I see of making it profitable is by advertising, fairly intensive advertising at that, at least for a while. And that will go over like a lead balloon with users who already are not happy campers that Yahoo took over. Another issue is just that, users. The demographic is way out of Yahoos' league. Like Insta-gram, Tumblr is for the younger crowd and the hipsters. They've got to make the purchase worth it without stepping on those toes,which means Yahoo can't really start meddling with the content of user posts whether it makes Yahoo uncomfortable or not. That's not the type of crowd you want to start making too many rules for, they'll bail on you.

It also remains to be seen what will happen when Yahoo makes the inevitable, and sensible move to integrate their own services with Tumblr. Will these users sign up for Yahoo Mail? Will they visit the Yahoo portal or any other Yahoo-provided services? Will they search with Yahoo? Right now Yahoo can't get its own users to sign into Yahoo with Yahoo accounts. Hilariously and sadly, they've included the option to sign in with their Facebook and Google accounts. That alone should speak volumes of how far they've fallen as a corporation. Yahoo isn't in a position anymore to throw money around willy nilly and toss things at the wall to see what sticks. But that's precisely what they seem to be doing. They promise not to screw it up, but I honestly don't think they can afford to.

If this goes bad, Marissa Mayers has a great chance of being sent to her desk to pack up her things. She hasn't lived up to the hype or expectations.

 

I thought Yahoo! had some serious financial problems.

 

They still have a decent bank account, or else they wouldn't be doing things like this. They just aren't making any money hardly. Instead of dumping a billion into a completely different world like Tumblr, they should be taking their search engine back and putting money into competing with Bing instead of letting Bing do their work. They need to stop being a general tech portal and start specializing in something, preferably something they already know about.

 

http://www.digitaltveurope.net/59192/yahoo-reportedly-bids-up-to-us800m-for-hulu/

 

I'm late to the party on this one..but they're insane. Melissa has lost her mind or she's going all in and praying.

 

Yes I haven't seen you during last few days . Yeah it's gone up to 800 from 500, they apparently think Hulu still got some potential of becoming something

 

http://www.digitaltveurope.net/62462/directv-reportedly-among-us1bn-plus-bidders-for-hulu/

 

http://www.digitaltveurope.net/63552/att-reportedly-eyeing-hulu/

 

http://www.digitaltveurope.net/64872/qatar-holding-latest-to-be-linked-to-hulu/

 

Yahoo, get out while you can. Seriously, it's unsustainable over the long haul, like every other streaming business.

 

http://www.digitaltveurope.net/77172/race-for-hulu-narrows/

 

http://www.telecompaper.com/news/fox-nbcuniversal-walt-disney-maintain-ownership-of-hulu--955056

 

So instead of selling it to more incapable people, it'll stay in the hands of its current incapable owners, lol.

 

Haha yepp, the sale is "on hold" from what I have read on some other sites