The editors at Hulu were feeling very rebellious this week when they decided to allow the users of social aggregation site Reddit to edit their homepage. A Hulu editor named Ben contacted the site, asking if they'd be game to dictate what video programming would appear on the "Featured Content" section of Hulu's homepage on Friday, June 24th.
To participate, Redditors only have to leave a video suggestion in the discussion thread; the most popular suggestions will appear on the homepage. As of Wednesday night, the most upvoted call-outs were for Carl Sagan series "Cosmos," FX Networks animated show "Archer" and "Arrested Development," which was actually a request from Hulu's Ben that Redditors were more than happy to oblige.
"Every. single. episode." read one comment from a user known as 'meltingice'.
Prior to picking Internet television programming, Reddit, a social news site owned by Conde Nast, has been known for its love of memes and breaking news across 'subreddit' forums like Gaming, Politics, and Christianity. A particularly popular forum, AMA 'Ask Me Anything' puts Redditors and celebrities in the hot seat by allowing site users to ask them any and all questions. Five members of the Google Docs team recently participated in this forum, soliciting 1527 questions and comments.
What does Hulu hope to get from the experience? "Troll away, of course," noted Ben, "but hopefully we’ll find something genuinely good that has just been locked up in our archives."