Online TV Sites Battle for Viewers

From BusinessWeek

Sites like TV.com, Hulu, and Joost that feature much of the same content are hoping that social-networking features will put them ahead of the crowd.

Throughout television history, the way to lure most viewers was to air the best shows. It doesn’t necessarily work that way on the Web, where many shows can seen on multiple sites.

But with the announcement by CBS that it would begin airing shows like Showtime’s Dexter and Sony Pictures Television’s Bewitched on TV.com, CBS‘s online site for full-length video, things are again changing. But none of the more than 1,000 new programs are exclusive to TV.com. And the episodes of Bewitched, the classic sitcom featuring the nose-wrinkling witch Samantha, are already on rival Hulu, the joint site of NBC Universal and News Corp.

“The question,” a senior analyst for media research says, is ” ‘how do you differentiate yourself beyond the content you have?’ ”

The answer is to encourage users to form a community. Host sites including TV.com, Joost, Sling.com, Veoh, Fancast, and Hulu are letting users post reviews, build profile pages, form fan groups, vote in interactive polls, and share activity logs with friends.