Hulu’s New Voodoo and Twitter’s New Way to Tweet

Sun, Sep 20, 2009, by Sophie Scripter

Social Networks

New applications taking social networking to the next level – But is it what the public wants?

Okay, so you’ve finally bit the bullet and got a Facebook account. Or you quietly logged onto to Twitter months ago and are now a Twitterholic. Well, don’t for a minute think you’ve finally caught up with the rest of society. You blink and you miss the next thing coming.

Here’s a look at some of the new technological advances coming to some of the most popular social networking websites.

Phone Calls via Twitter:

Millions of people have found their way to the microblogging site Twitter, allowing you to read short messages from friends and co-workers… and for you to make them yourself. Coming soon to Twitter is a new application @call.  This will allow you to make a short phone call (for free) with your computer by just typing @call and then the name of the person you want to talk to. You need to be a registered user of both Twitter and Jajah, an internet telephone company. Signing up for both services is free. For the initial launch, this will only be available to phone numbers in the United States.

Jajah has made a very nice and informative video on how this works.

I may be wrong, but I don’t see this becoming wildly popular. I mean, why do we need a website to dial the phone for us? And second off, I don’t even know why anyone would want to do this. I got on Twitter so I wouldn’t have to actually talk to people.  But hey, it is a free 2-minute phone call. And for someone who doesn’t like being on the phone very long, it could be a nice excuse for why you can’t talk long!

Watch Hulu with Facebook Friends.

It did not start out as a social networking site, but Hulu is now turning to the dark side. Last spring the site started adding some social networking components like letting people create a profile or to be able to “friend” other users. Well now they’ve teamed up with the social networking giant Facebook.

Hulu has now created a “Watch Now Fall Premiere” application for Facebook. So you can watch a preview of your favorite show (like Heroes or Family Guy) while getting to see a live feed of what people who are also watching are saying about the shows… and putting the comments you add to that feed to also be posted on your Facebook status.

The problem with this is that it goes against the main benefit Hulu has to offer – to watch what you want, WHEN you want. This new Hulu/Facebook application is only applicable during the set times Hulu is airing these Fall Premiere shows.

All in all, there countless more things to come our way. Some will catch on. Some won’t. I remember when Twitter was still new, many people couldn’t imagine a site that limited you to 140 characters would ever be so popular. So, we’ll just have to wait and see which of these new social networking tools will be the next big thing.

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