It looks like Hulu chickened out.
On Wednesday, Ben Collins, one of the online vieo site’s editors, asked users of social news site Reddit to vote on their top videos. The number one choice, he said, would feature on the site’s homepage. The top ten would go into their own Hulu playlist.
The result?
“We weren’t expecting much of a response out of it,” Collins wrote on the Hulu blog. “We just like Reddit.Two days, 5,210 upvotes, and 2,069 karma points for Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos” later, we’re blown away.”
Well, except, not really.
The top choice wasn’t a video at all: It was “A giant “Sorry, this video is not available in your country” notice,” suggested by redditor Guru_Guru. That had about 11 more points (upvotes minus downvotes) than Sagan’s Cosmos.
So what gives?
To be fair, Collins only invited redditors to vote on TV shows or movies in the company’s library. And international film and television licenses don’t fall under Hulu’s control: the site is just a delivery platform, after all.
Still, the company’s public relations folks missed a golden chance to address this issue by wading into the comments and engaging with customers directly.
Instead, the only response came on the company blog, where Collins posted this vague message earlier this morning:
“To all of our Reddit friends abroad who voted accordingly, we hear you loud and clear. We’re working hard to bring our content to you.”
Redditors shouldn’t feel too bad, though. We contacted Hulu for clarification however, no response had been recieved at time of pubication.