Post Published on November 3, 2012.
Last Updated on April 23, 2016 by davemackey.
Hulu is a pretty nifty service that I use in combination with Netflix and other free services to eliminate television / cable from our home. We use the internet or DVDs for anything we want to watch. That said, there are a number of relatively minor enhancements Hulu could make to improve their service…Here are my suggestions:
Skipping Ads
No one likes ads…but I’m usually willing to sit through them if I haven’t watched them before…but when it is the same ad for the hundredth time? Now I’m just frustrated and bored. So, what about letting folks deposit a small amount (say $5) into a Hulu “bank” and when they don’t want to watch an ad (b/c they’ve seen it before or b/c the show just left off at a cliffhanger they are eager to return to), allow them to choose to skip the ad – in exchange for a few cents. I don’t know how much each ad view is worth to Hulu – but say even $0.05 or $0.10 – there are many times when I’d be willing to pay this to skip over an annoying ad and get back a few seconds of my life.
Using this sort of methodology, they could partner with someone like Swagbucks to offer other ways of earning ad skips – e.g. by filling out surveys, accepting trial offers, and so on.
This might help Hulu better monetize their inventory while reducing their dependence on advertising revenue – which can be a fickle mistress at times.
Search History
Doggone it. I stopped watching x show six months ago and I can’t remember what episode I left off on. How can I find out? Well, I can page through my History on Hulu – but this can be quite extensive. What if Hulu added the ability to search through one’s history? Then you could easily type in the name of the show and see what episodes you’d already watched.
History Organization
Along similar lines as above, it’d be nice to be able to sort one’s history – e.g., do drill downs by show, group movie trailers together, etc.
Undo Delete History
I like to look through my history every once in a while and get rid of excerpts and trailers. I don’t really need to keep track of them. But sometimes I accidentally click on a TV show – which I do want to track, and there is no undelete option! I also remove items if I started watching it but didn’t finish it – that way I don’t think I did watch it if I come back later.
Multi-Delete
Sometimes I might want to delete a bunch of history items in a row, but there is no option for multiple selections. The page also does a full postback – it would be better to use AJAX – this would make the interface slicker and reduce the amount of bandwidth hulu uses.
What About You?
Are there features you’d like to see Hulu add? Fixes that need to be made?