Hulu Plus hits three million subscriber milestone

Working to improve Hulu Plus on the Web and home theater hardware over the past year, the streaming video company is continuing to attract new subscribers.

Detailed within a post published earlier today on the official Hulu blog, the subscriber base to the premium $8-a-month Hulu Plus service has grown steadily over 2012 to three million people. The subscriber base hit two million accounts during April 2012 and has doubled since the fourth quarter of last year. The Hulu Plus service had the most significant bursts in subscriber growth during the first and fourth quarter of 2012. This trend lines up with the timing of new programming released on the service by popular broadcast networks during the Fall and Spring television seasons.

With three million subscribers, Hulu stands to collect approximately $24 million per month in monthly fees over the next year. However, if Hulu Plus continues to grow at the same rate, the company could add another 1.5 to two million subscribers by the end of 2013.

That would put their monthly subscriber revenue between $32 million to $40 million. Hulu is also selling a significant amount of advertising on the service. Total yearly revenue for 2012 came out to $695 million and the streaming video company delivered advertisements for more than 1,000 clients. 

Hulu CEO Jason Kilar noted that the launch of Hulu Kids with content from Viacom’s Nickelodeon was a big part of the growth strategy over the past year. Other content expansion deals during 2012 have included expanded access to older CBS shows like CSI:Miami, greater investment in original programming and the launch of Hulu-exclusive shows like Battleground.

In addition, the development team working on Hulu Plus has made the streaming service available on more hardware over the past year. This includes rolling out on the Nintendo Wii U, Apple TV and a variety of Android tablets including the ASUS Transformer Prime. During 2012, Hulu representatives also upgraded the size of the Hulu video player along with offering Face Match to help users identify actors and actresses within their favorite television shows.

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Microsoft’s Outlook email client reaches 25 million user milestone, launches new features and Android app

Microsoft is celebrating the 25 million active user landmark for its Outlook email client by launching additional features and an Android app.

Today Microsoft announced that Outlook reached its 25 million active user milestone, an achievement worth celebrating especially when Microsoft claims that four out of five Gmail users “would” switch to Outlook. And Microsoft isn’t slowing down: It will introduce a slew of new features for Outlook in the coming weeks.

If you’re familiar with the Bing It On Challenge – sponsored by Microsoft – then its recent findings about Outlook will feel familiar. Results based on a study from a Microsoft hired research firm that gauged the sentiments of Gmail users about Outlook found that users preferred Outlook’s design, filters, and document sharing features. Seeing as how there isn’t an independent study at hand aside from the one commissioned by Microsoft, we’re going to justify our opinion of Outlook based on our hands on with the email client - and ultimately, we were pretty impressed. 

While Outlook has a good thing going with its streamlined interface, unlike the increasingly cluttered and chaotic Gmail, Microsoft plans on adding additional features to Outlook. “We continue to listen to feedback on what enthusiasts want next – including making the switch from Gmail even easier – and build those features,” said David Law, Windows Live product marketing manager, in a blog post. 

Users can archive messages with the click of the “Archive” button and store the messages in any folder on Outlook.

People love keyboard shortcuts. By typing “?” when you’re in your inbox, a window with all (and new) keyboard shortcuts will open up.

More color themes have been added.

 iPhone and Windows Phone users already have their own apps but now Android users will be as lucky. Exchange ActiveSync wasn’t supported natively on the Android OS. But now Microsoft is offering an Outlook Android app, which you can download directly from the Google Play store. The app is free to download and supports the following Android versions: 2.1 – 2.3.3 and 4.0 – 4.1.

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