YouTube vs. Hulu

I went on YouTube and watched a video entitled: we lost to oakland. The video, which is a pretty poor parenting move, is of a young San Diego Chargers fan who is extremely distraught over the impending loss his team is about to earn against the Oakland Raiders on October 10th of this season. The reason that it's poor parenting is that the person who both filmed and posted this video was the boy's own mother. Rough. However, all video content aside, the experience of just watching this video on YouTube is very different from that of Hulu. One thing that we have talked about a lot in this class is the rise of the amateur on the web. This video is a great example of this--a mom took her personal video camera, filmed her son in a moment of vulnerability, and then decided to share it with the rest of the world via YouTube.

On Hulu, I decided to watch a clip from The Office. When you start a Hulu video, you have to watch an ad, which is something that I didn't have to do on YouTube. Also, the production value from the clip are much higher since it is an actual television show filmed in a somewhat-studio with high-tech, state-of-the-art cameras and professionally edited to look better. As I mentioned, the idea of the amateur is truer to YouTube than it is for Hulu. Very few amateurs, if any, are able to put their work on Hulu, whereas on YouTube, anyone can post anything as long as its not indecent. Similarly, it is often hard to find a lot of the content that is put on Hulu on YouTube. I searched for the same clip of The Office on YouTube, but it wasn't there. Because of its professional and copyrighted nature, much of the content on Hulu has to be protected and is often removed from YouTube if it ever makes it up there.