Am I getting old or are things just getting dumber? Don’t answer that. I won’t want to know either way. News Corp. and NBC Universal announced the name of their jointly ventured online video site: Hulu.
It sounds Hawaiian, and I can dig that, except that after the launch of Mahalo it looks like a trend. And I hate trends. But the meaning is apropos if you’re NBC, not so much if you’re News Corp.; hulu means “feather” or “plumage,” reports CenterNetworks, just perfect for the peacock.
At least that’d be a better explanation than the one Hulu CEO Jason Kilar gave, which reeks of PR flack tampering:
Why Hulu? Objectively, Hulu is short, easy to spell, easy to pronounce, and rhymes with itself. Subjectively, Hulu strikes us as an inherently fun name, one that captures the spirit of the service we’re building.
Um, right. Mike Arrington says it also means “butt” in Indonesian.
It took them nearly half a year to come up with the name, so they’re all most likely giving us the finger right now for making fun of them – besides, there was most likely a focus group involved.
And hey, we said the same stuff about the Wii, didn’t we?
If you want to check out Hulu, you’re out of luck for now. You can look at the TV show promo thumbnails while you sign up for the private beta that begins in October.
Hulu has some impressive distribution partners, with one notable absence. I’ll list them here: AOL, Comcast, MSN, MySpace, and Yahoo. Can you guess who’s missing?
