Saul Hansell over at the New York Times Bits Blog has written an editorial that talks endlessly about how great Hulu is and how stupid all the people like me were when we talked it down.

I call it an editorial because there’s no way you can say this represents anything close to unbiased reporting or analysis.  It begins with the premise that Hulu is an unqualified success (emphasis added):

Why were so many people in the technology world wrong about Hulu? It was an idea that seemed like a relic of the worst excesses of the dot-com era: a portal for content run by a joint venture of media companies. Could any venture have more going against it?

Portals, of course, are passé in a world where search engines point people to content spread all over the Web. Who needs professional content when users make their own? And if there is anything more clueless than a big media company, the Silicon Valley wisdom goes, it is a joint venture of several media companies bound to undercut each other with crossed agendas.

Yet Hulu, founded in March 2007, is triumphant when most other video sites have languished.

According to the most recent numbers from Comscore, Hulu is only the fourth largest video property on the web behind everyone but all the other mainstream video portals.

 
Has Hulu achieved profitability though?  Shouldn’t that be the real measure of success for a company?

Hulu’s numbers are closely guarded and difficult to discern, much like most of the entertainment business, so it’s hard to say. According to Sarah Perez over at ReadWriteWeb, Hulu earned around $90 million in it’s first year.  As impressive as that sounds, it’s definitely no measure of success, net profits are estimated to be only near $12 million.

Hulu Has Done it Wrong from the Beginning
During the ramp up period to Hulu when everyone, including me, called it ClownCo right up through the launch – Hulu, lead fearlessly by NBC Universal, has made wrong turn after wrong turn with great confidence and inexplicable accolades from the tech blogosphere.

During my initial review of Hulu on launch day, this is what I saw for most of it:

 
Once I was finally able to get into the site, I found that the site:

• Lacked basic social interactivity.
• Only allowed sharing on video that aired originally in the 70s.
• Lacked full runs of many popular series, like Battlestar Galactica, which have an incredible following online.
• The geo-retardation actually prevented many US residents from viewing the site as well as anyone not living in America.

Still, during the first day’s reviews, mine was the only negative review to show up on Techmeme.

Consider what NBC and the other networks gave up when they banned themselves from YouTube and iTunes:

• Distribution and community on one of the largest communities on the Internet – one with real interaction in YouTube
• A much more profitable distribution method in iTunes (iTunes pay-for-content model turned $570 million in profit last year to Hulu’s paltry $12).
• The ability for their content to show up on a variety of devices, ranging from handheld devices to set-top boxes in iTunes.
• The ability to be streamed to almost every type of smartphone and networked mobile device in YouTube.

So the major networks, in their infinite wisdom, cut themselves off at the knees in almost every way; from distribution to audience to community (not to mention bandwidth costs, profits and popular acceptance).

Remind me again why we consider Hulu a success?