By Samantha Karol
Marketing Assistant, CPX Interactive

The number of online social networking sites has increased drastically in recent years, along with their popularity. Now,  other sites are jumping on the social networking bandwagon in an effort to expand their user bases. According to The Wall Street Journal and USA Today, the most recent example of this is Hulu, the online video channel that lets users share their favorite movies and TV shows with friends and family. To mark their one year anniversary, which occurs today, Hulu will be adding social networking functions to its site. Users can still share their favorites on other networking sites like Facebook and Myspace, but they will also be able to connect with people on Hulu itself.

Hulu’s content goes beyond TV shows and movies to instructional videos on channels like food & leisure or home & garden. According to the Hulu Blog, the company has achieved great success in its first year: they have approximately 24 million monthly users (comScore VideoMetrix, January 2009), their video library has grown from 12,000 to 40,000, and there has been an increase in streams from the site from 63 million in May 2008, to 308 million in February 2009 (Nielsen VideoCensus).

It’s not quite clear exactly what the new features will be, but Hulu hopes that allowing users to connect with one another and share their videos will bring greater success to the site. If it works, other sites will surely follow in their footsteps.

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