Hulu has been talking about reaching the 1 million paid user number for quite some time now. Not so long ago, the company predicted that it would have a million paid Hulu Plus subscribers by the end of 2011. On Wednesday, the company’s CEO stated that Hulu has amassed 875,000 paid users, and that by the end of summer the site will pass the one million mark.
This is news that all of Hulu’s prospective buyers should be very interested in hearing. Not only will Hulu quickly reach 1 million users several months earlier than hoped, but it is also very profitable.
Jasn Kilar, Hulu CEO, says that Hulu Plus gained more new subscribers in June then it did in April and May combined. It would seem as though the large spike in subcribers is due to how aggressively Hulu is expanding the devices that can access Hulu content. In the past 90 days, the company made Hulu available on Xbox 360, Tivo Premier DVRs, Samsung Blu-ray players, and Android devices. We think that the addition of Android to the mix is what really put Hulu over the top. However, as Hulu Plus nears 1 million subscribers, it’s worth pointing out that Netflix still sits pretty at 23 million in the U.S. and Canada alone.
The blog post does give some mixed signals about Hulu’s goals, and accomplishments. At the start of Kilar’s blog post, he mentions that in order to create a special company, it needs to delight its customers. Later in the post, he mentions that Hulu serves nearly double the video advertisements as the next largest advertising source.
Hulu is clearly on the right track, and even if it doesn’t end up being bought in the near future, the company looks as though it will be doing just fine on its own, for now.
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