On Monday, a massive, 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck southwestern China's Sichuan province. With official death tolls currently over 19,500 -- with 30,000 more reported missing -- reports of the devastation continue as rescue workers reach the most affected areas.

With an office in China, this particular tragedy struck home for the team at Hulu. We'd like to take a moment to recognize the disaster and also offer ways that we all can support in the relief effort.

Organizations such as the Red Cross and Mercy Corps are working to provide critical supplies -- including water, food, milk and shelter items -- as well as resources for longer-term recovery and reconstruction efforts in the region.

If you wish to help, you can make a tax-deductible donation by visiting any of the following sites:

• International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies
• American Red Cross
• Mercy Corps

Our thoughts are with all of those affected by the tragedy.

Jason
Hulu CEO
jason.kilar@hulu.com

When we initially announced our company's name, I wrote a short blog post about the choice of Hulu as our moniker. Now that the service has been launched in the U.S., I thought I'd share more background and context on why we chose the name Hulu. After all, we're very proud of the name, and perhaps some of our new users are curious about its origins.

In a series of marathon naming sessions, Eric, Christina, Eugene and I (shown below) generated, reviewed and debated a very long list of names, filling the whiteboard walls with dozens of possibilities last July and August. In doing so, we came up with a short list of interesting names and a much longer list of horrendous names. It turns out it’s much easier to think up bad names as opposed to good ones!

At some point during the marathon naming sessions, the name Hulu was suggested in addition to slight variants. Eric -- who doubles as Hulu's CTO -- mentioned he had actually considered the name Hulu for an online video venture that he previously founded in China. In Mandarin, Hulu has two interesting meanings, each highly relevant to our mission. The primary meaning interested us because it is used in an ancient Chinese proverb that describes the Hulu as the holder of precious things. It literally translates to "gourd," and in ancient times, the Hulu was hollowed out and used to hold precious things. The secondary meaning is "interactive recording." We saw both definitions as appropriate bookends and highly relevant to the mission of Hulu.

As I mentioned several months ago, we were also excited about the name because it had no meaning in the English language. Given that we had aspired -- and continue to aspire -- to create a unique experience that is both worthy of remark and defies easy comparison, having a name with no direct definition appealed to us. For practical purposes, we also set out to have a relatively short, easy-to-pronounce name. And though we had done our homework -- we were familiar with all the translations, both good and bad -- we still wanted a name that was both approachable and fun. After all, we're not selling life insurance or medical instruments here.

And so the name Hulu came to be.

Jason
jason.kilar@hulu.com

Welcome to Hulu! Our passionate and growing team here has been very hard at work on a service that we’re quite excited about. We’ll keep you updated with news as we go along.

The first bit of news we’d like to share is that we have a name: Hulu.

Why Hulu? Objectively, Hulu is short, easy to spell, easy to pronounce, and rhymes with itself. Subjectively, Hulu strikes us as an inherently fun name, one that captures the spirit of the service we’re building. Our hope is that Hulu will embody our (admittedly ambitious) never-ending mission, which is to help you find and enjoy the world’s premier content when, where and how you want it.

The second bit of news is that we are now accepting sign-ups at hulu.com for invitations to our web site’s private beta. The Hulu private beta will be available in October. In the interest of delivering a great customer experience and making sure that we can address any feedback that comes along the way, we’re going to start small and grow iteratively in terms of the volumes of people that we invite to participate in the beta. Within that same timeframe, we will also be offering great programming through our distribution partner sites: AOL, Comcast, MSN, MySpace, and Yahoo.

Ok, now it’s time for all of us at Team Hulu to get back to work! Don’t forget to register your email address for the upcoming private beta.

Jason Kilar
CEO, Hulu
jason.kilar@hulu.com