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8.6 Social Games and Gamification 245
Hulu
• Photography and art sharing. Flickr, Instagram,
Hulu (hulu.com) offers advertisement-supported streaming Picasa, SmugMug, Photobucket
on-demand videos of TV shows and movies from NBC, Fox, • Video sharing. YouTube, Vimeo, Metacafe, Open-
Disney (including ABC programs), and other networks and film, Japan’s Niconico (nicovideo.jp; now available
studios. Due to copyright laws, Hulu offers videos only to in English as well),
users in the United States and a few other countries. Hulu • Livecasting. Twitch.tv, Livestream, Skype, Ustream
provides video in Flash video format. In addition, Hulu • Mobile social networks: Path, Liveme
offers some TV shows and movies in high definition in a • Music and audio sharing. ccMixter, FreeSound,
manner similar to Google Sites, Fox Interactive Media, and Last.fm, MySpace, Reverb-Nation, The Hype Machine
Yahoo! Sites. Users can manually share videos they like on (hypem.com/popular)
their Facebook pages by using the “Facebook” button. It is • Presentation sharing. SlideSnack, SlideShare,
not necessary to connect their Hulu and Facebook accounts authorSTREAM
to do this. Hulu is one of the most popular Internet video • Media and entertainment platforms. Kaltura Open
sites (see nielsen.com/us/en/newswire/2013/binging-is- the- Source Video (corp.kaltura.com/Video- Solutions/
new-viewing-for-over-the-top-streamers.html). Hulu offers Media-and-Entertainment)
some of its services free, supported by advertising. It also • Virtual worlds. Second Life, The Sims, Active-
offers Hulu Plus, which includes premium shows and the worlds, IMVU
ability to watch on more devices for a monthly fee of $8.99. • Game sharing. Miniclip, Kongregate
This service, however, also features limited advertising. For
more about their offerings and difference between Hulu and
Hulu Plus, click on the “frequently asked questions” tab at
hulu.com/plus. Note that many of these have some features of social net-
Advertising and subscriptions are the primary social com- works; therefore, they may be referred to as such. In addi-
merce business models for most streaming entertainment tion, most of these generate revenue from advertising and/or
sites. subscriptions, including from mobile devices.
Funny or Die and Cracked.com
SECTION 8.5 REVIEW QUESTIONS
According to their website, Funny or Die (funnyordie.com)
is a comedy video website created by actor and comedian 1. Relate social networks to streaming music.
Will Ferrell, among others. Unlike other viral video sites, 2. Describe the ways you can watch videos on the Web
members of Funny or Die are encouraged to vote on videos (streaming videos on-demand).
that they view. If they think the video is funny, viewers cast a 3. Describe some of the multimedia presentation sites.
vote for “Funny.” The video then gets a score of the total per-
centage of people who voted the video “Funny.” If the video
receives an 80% or greater “Funny” rating after 100,000 8.6 SOCIAL GAMES AND GAMIFICATION
views, it gets an “Immortal” ranking. If the video receives a
20% or less “Funny” rating after 1000 views, it “dies” and is A social game is a video multiplayer game played on the
relegated to the Crypt section of the site. Internet, mostly in social networks or in virtual worlds. Gamers
Cracked.com, another humor website (which includes can play against computers or against each other. Many social
videos), also uses crowdsourcing to solicit material from the games are “massively” multiplayer online games (known as
Internet crowd. MMOG or MMO), which are capable of supporting hundreds
to many thousands of players simultaneously. MMOG players
can compete, collaborate, or just interact with other players
Multimedia Presentation and Sharing Sites around the globe. Many game consoles, including the PSP,
PlayStation 8, Xbox 860, Nintendo DSi, and Wii can be played
Multimedia sharing can be done in several ways, and its pur- on the Internet. Additionally, mobile devices and smartphones
pose is entertainment, advertising, training, and socializa- based on such operating systems as Android, iOS, webOS, and
tion. The following are some representative types of sharing, Windows Mobile are seeing an increase in the number of
and companies in each area: MMO available games. Social games are very popular.