When watching TV becomes social – Facehulu
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The article talked about the integration of Hulu’s service into Facebook. Hulu is an online video service that streams TV shows, movies, and video clips to end-users. They recently launched a new Facebook application, which allows Facebook users to watch Hulu’s content within Facebook. Users can share what they have watched with their friends, along with their comments on a particular moment in the video.
Hulu’s recent move reflects the profound influence of social networking websites, in this case Facebook. Facebook changes not only the way people interact with their friends, but also how companies promote and advertise themselves. It has been common practices for people to like a company’s page or share the news or link about a company on Facebook. The incorporation of Hulu’s service into Facebook, however, involves something broader and deeper. By letting people share what they watched and comment on particular moments, Hulu is making their service part of the social networking experience. Watching videos online is no longer just something people do when they are alone in front of their computers, but is becoming an interactive social activity. Facebook-ing and Hulu-ing are playing an increasingly similar role as the traditional social interaction such as eating out and watching movies with friends.
The trend reveals the ongoing change in the structure of people’s social network. Networks among the younger generation are now more Internet-based. People spend longer time interacting with computers and communicating with other people through chat clients. When people can share/comment on a TV series as they do with their daily life photos, the fictional stories in the media become part of their real life via a digital bridge. The bridge of Facehulu, however, seems to be geographically limited. Hulu is only accessible in US and Japan at the moment. While people in US might find this application useful when they are talking to their groups of closest friends, someone remote/overseas might fail to feel the same joy. Despite of Hulu’s current locality, the digitalization and deeper penetration of media into people’s life is a clear trend that is seen globally today. It should be interesting to see the compositions of connections between people on a global scale 10 years from now on.