I am very excited to welcome Hulu to the Internet. NBC and News Corp.’s online video site, Hulu, has just been released in private beta. I think that this site will really shakeup the Internet.

What does Hulu bring to the game?

On Hulu you will be able to watch episodes from your favorite TV show, like 24, Family Guy, 30 Rock, Heroes, Prison Break, The Office (my favorite show), Friday Night Lights, etc. In addition to NBC, the content providers include Fox, E, Bravo, FX, SciFi, USA and Universal. For a more complete listing of the content that will be available on Hul, here is a programming guide. I am sure that this will change drastically.

What does Hulu offer to bloggers?

Like with YouTube, bloggers will be able to embed these videos right in their blog posts. This is great. The ability to share these videos and incorporate them into your content is outstanding.

I also like that you will be able to email the videos to your friends.

This is brilliant. Allowing people to share this content will allow the content providers to create many more loyal fans for their TV shows. Too often people never hear about great TV shows until they have been on for a long time. This could really change that.

You will also be able to set start and stop points for these shared videos. This is great because you can focus in on the exact part of the clip that you want people to see.

How do I get an invite?

Unfortunately, Hulu is still in private beta so you will need to get an invitation to join. DownloadSquad is reporting that there are only a few thousand invitees so far. However, you can see some of the Hulu videos here on AOL.

According to Valleywag, Facebook employees are in the habit of checking out people’s profiles and snooping around to see who certain people have been checking up on. Is this a violation of our privacy? Well, I am not sure, but I had to laugh at the Fake Steve Job’s response,

Some of us are still trying to get our heads around the idea that Valleywag is pretending to be outraged at the idea of someone snooping into the private affairs of other people. I mean, hello? Valleywag? The guys who follow Eric Schmidt around on dates? Man oh man.

That is too funny and so true.

Michael Krigsman from ZDNet is not surprised, but thinks that Facebook should prohibit their employees from doing this. In fact, he compared it to the IRS snooping around people’s tax returns.

Mac Beach thinks that this is a much bigger problem at Facebook. According to Mac Beach, Facebook consistently and pervasively disregards people’s privacy.

I think that Facebook should implement a policy prohibiting employees from doing this. But, I think that the more important thing to gain from this story is an awareness of the privacy concerns that the Internet raises.

We need to be careful about our online activities. Social Networking is great, but it is social. Just like you wouldn’t share certain things with your colleagues at work, you shouldn’t share certain things about yourself on social networking sites. These social networking sites leave a trail on the Internet about you. People can piece together a lot about you by doing a Google search, checking out what pages you Digg, and who your friends are on Facebook and Linkdin.

Tell me about your online privacy concerns.

I am happy to report that Google has updated my page rank. Newest on the Net has been given a pagerank of 3. My other blog, MMO Explorer, has been give a pagerank of 4. I am pretty happy that Newest on the Net is page rank. That is not too shabby for being a month and a half old.

Here are two free page rank checkers that you can use to check you page rank:

•  Live PageRank
•  Future PageRank

Have your sites been updated? Where are you at?

I have read some great articles this week. I hope that you like them.

Great Ways To Increase Traffic To Your Blog:

• How To Market On Facebook – Performancing.com has a great article about how to market on Facebook. I really like the idea of creating a group. In fact, I am going to create one for Newest on the Net. Stay tuned for the creation of this group. I hope that you will join. We can help each other find new sites and online services.

• The 7 Secrets To Viral Content – Daily Blog Tips has written some great tips for creating viral content. Several of the points raised I found particularly interesting. First, was creating a lot of value in a small package. This is an interesting concept. I often fight with the idea of creating a series of posts versus creating one large post. I think for viral purposes it is better to do one large value packed article. The second point that I found very interesting was,

Any information that does not make your post easier to understand, or support your core message, needs to be cut, and cut without remorse. If you can make the same point in less words, do so.

Social media is best characterized as a war for attention. You can’t waste a drop of it on the unimportant.

Blog posts need to be very succinct and scanable. People want to be able to retain a lot of information, but not focus too hard.

Improve Your Technical Blogging Skills:

• 5 Ways To Increase The Loading Speed Of A WordPress Blog – Aseem from Online Tech Tips has some great tips for increasing your blog’s loading speed. To summarize, Aseem recommends that you (1) uninstall unnecessary plugins, (2) reduce the number of images you use in your blog design, (3) use the WP-Cache plugin, (4) enable Gzip with WP-Cache (he includes a link to show you how), and (5) replace PHP calls with static HTML.

• WordPress Tip: Finding Future Post Permalinks – This article will really help you with your series posts.

• How To Make Your WordPress Blog Load Faster – Pingable has some more great tips for decreasing your blog’s loading time.

• Blogging Tip: Improve Your Site By Improving Your Theme – Kyle has written a great post about improving you blog’s theme. I have recently done the same on Newest on the Net.

Learn to Podcast:

• The Ultimate Guide To Podcasting – Cumbrowski has written an awesome guide for people who want to learn how to podcast.

Today I was fortunate to get invited into the Jango beta. I am really excited about Jango. My wife and I have been big fans of Pandora for about a year now. However, Pandora offers no social features. Pandora also does not do a great job of introducing you to new music. Having said that, Pandora is an awesome service. Will Jango meet my expectations?

Well, so far it is meeting my expectations. Like with Pandora, Jango allows you to create custom stations by typing in an artist. That station will play songs by that artist and by similar artists. This is a great way to listen to music. Sometimes my wife and I feel like listening to classical music and we type in Handel or Mozart. Sometimes we are in the mood for blues so we type in Nora Jones. Other times we feel like partying so we type in Jimmy Buffett.

Jango also has preset stations. This is a nice change from Pandora. You can find out about new pop music, rock, R&B, country, and electronica (I don’t even know what that is). Here is a picture of the home page.

Now for the social. Jango shows you what other people are listening to. Jango also helps you get in touch with people who enjoy similar types of music. Listening to music becomes participatory. You share your likes with others and help them to discover new music. In the process you learn about new music too. Pretty cool.

You should sign up for the beta. I got my invitation the same day that I applied.

If you get in, tell me if you like it.

Update: I just received 500 invites to give away for Jango. If you would like to try it out, sign up for Jango using this link.