If you live in a household with more than one person who enjoys television, then you understand the advantage of having user profiles on your television. This is particularly true in today’s digital content landscape, where most providers are monitoring your viewing habits to provide personalized content suggestions. While profile features have long been the case for industry giants like Netflix, Hulu is just now getting on board.
That’s right, if you are one of Hulu’s 12 million + subscribers you can finally have your own profile and get recommendations that are actually targeted towards you! At the moment you can only access the profiles feature via a web browser. However, Hulu has also announced that the profile features will be coming to the most popular Hulu devices over the next few weeks, including: The Chromecast, Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS3, PS4, “classic” Apple TV, iOS, and Android.
For the moment, Hulu will only allow a maximum of six profiles per Hulu subscription. In comparison, Netflix allows a maximum of five.
Hulu is also looking to differentiate its profile service from the competition by offering what Hulu’s Vice President of Product Richard Irving calls a “taste picking experience.” This “experience” is designed to suss out the kind of content that a profile user prefers. This information will be used in conjunction with the normal algorithm all Hulu users see that decides what their suggested content will be. This combination will “…help [Hulu] ensure that each profile surfaces recommendations and content that is distinctly personal to each viewer. If you tell us you love medical dramas and horror movies, we’ll make sure you see those genres of programs in your recommended content,” according to Irving’s same blog post.
Each Hulu profile will have its own username, personal info, viewing history, recommendations and Hulu Watchlist. For those parents out there, Hulu will also offer a special Kids Profile, which automatically restricts access to any mature content. You’ll never have to worry about your child stumbling across inappropriate Hulu content.
For those of you wondering why you can’t see the option to create a profile yet, fear not. Hulu is rolling out the feature in waves to its users over the next few weeks. Most users can expect access by early 2017.
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