I love a good domain name, but what is a good name? Unless the name is descriptive, it is not the name itself. It is what that name invokes when you think about it. Hence trademark law protects just that. Let us take a look at the history of the domain Hulu.com which we all now know as the streaming show and movie service. Using the web archive we can see the history of the sites related to Hulu.com and it appears that in 1999 it was registered, or at least utilized, by Lucy Hulu as a personal website. That is when it starts, so off we go.
1999- Lucy Hulu
The first recorded image of a website was in 1999 as a personal website. It looks like Lucy Hulu was the owners as she has placed an image gallery on the site. Think back to 1999, that was early web and the fact that she even registered the domain is impressive and she used it in a useful way. Here is an image to the right from her site which on the site was a moving .gif image, novel for the time. It appears that she continued use of the site until mid-2007 when her webpages were removed and a new one appeared. Here comes Hulu as we know it.
Mid 2007 – Here Comes Hulu
Some time in the middle of 2007 the pages that Lucy had made disappeared and the first Hulu page arrived. On the page it invited you to provide your email address and take part in their private beta. Considering how popular Hulu is and online streaming sites such as Netflix, it is interesting to see the foresight that the original Hulu team and creator had. Here is a snapshot of that very website.
Today – 2013
Fast forward to 2013. Hulu is both free and paid. It was originally free with no advertisements. Then they added advertisements. Soon thereafter they added a premium paid service. As of the writing of this article they stated 4 million paid users at $8 a month (at the end of Q1 2013). That is impressive in my opinion. Here is the latest most recent snap shot of the site below.
It is always fun to see what was, what became, and what is, in the world of domain names.
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