Hulu, a new and legal way to watch tv sitcoms online

By David Levasseur

Today NBC and News Corp. launched Hulu.com. Hulu is a streaming video website the two media giants hope will combat the illegal file sharing epidemic of video content through p2p sites like youtube.
Hulu's agenda is huge and they are hoping to take over Youtube's place on the Internet by investing big money(including $100 million in private equity) and a total valuation reportedly worth $1 billion. Hulu is currently in invitation-only Beta testing mode(email required) and you will not even be able to watch your favorite tv sitcoms and other programming until October.
NBC and News Corp. are far from being the only media companies with illegal content file sharing issues on their plates. It seems like everybody in the broadcasting and entertainment industry are competing to be the front runners in the ever changing information world. Traditional advertising is clearly a thing of the past. I expect Hulu to come up with some very creative new methods of earning advertisers' dollars.
Why the name Hulu? Jason Kilar, CEO of Hulu, says, "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. Our hope is that Hulu will embody our (admittedly ambitious) never-ending mission, which is to help you find and enjoy the world's premier content when, where and how you want it."

I think we will be hearing a lot more about Hulu in the next little while, but will it achieve its' goals? Time will tell.