Portland-based SplashCast, the service that makes it easy for anyone to embed entertainment channels practically anywhere on the Web, has just entered a partnership with a little online video company of which you might have heard, called Hulu.
Under the partnership, SplashCast will be building a bunch of custom players for Hulu shows. Anyone can pick their favorite show, take the player, embed it in their Facebook page or MySpace profile, and enjoy piping hot episodes of their favorite show delivered to their channel as they become available on Hulu.
Which shows? Well, a number of popular Hulu titles made the cut:
SplashCast has plans to carry 20 popular Hulu shows from a variety of networks. For NBC, the shows include The Office, Saturday Night Live, 30 Rock, Chuck, and Heroes. FOX offerings (which I’m betting will get the most play with the social media crowd) include The Simpsons, Family Guy, Arrested Development, House, Bones, Fringe, and Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles. Additional shows include Battlestar Galactica, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and Nip/Tuck, among others.
If users can already embed Hulu videos, why do they need SplashCast? Because SplashCast enables users to embed channels—wrapped with social features—that can carry entire seasons of shows, if not a library of multiple seasons. Plus, it gives Hulu another mechanism to push content to its users, rather than expecting them to swing by Hulu to find the latest and greatest.
This is huge news for SplashCast. Hulu is currently one of the darlings of the Web, because it’s a traditional media play with high production value that understands how to work within the new constructs of the Web. That and they’re on track to make $90 million in their first year.
I’m not seeing a post on the SplashCast blog yet, but you can read the press release, CenterNetworks, or my write-up on the SplashCast Hulu partnership on ReadWriteWeb.