BET.com ditches BET On Blast, Takes note from Hulu

Though the BET On Blast video player was nice when it launched a little over 2 years ago video on the web has certainly moved in another direction.  Specifically if you happen to be a television network.  BET.com recently ditched the BET on Blast player, which many thought was hard to navigate, and leveled the playing field with not only it’s sister sites (VH1 and MTV) but networks who have a presence online in general.  While video is the most notable change (and most exciting in my opinion considering where video on the web is going) there are several other changes on the site that aren’t worth over looking.

Video

The familiar player now allows sharing (mainly embedding and URL sharing).  The video library is logical and finally includes the breath of the network’s programming including video’s from artist which plays nice with the artist’s pages we mention below.

Individual videos can also be rated by a user and comments can be added.

Original Webisodes

I actually stumbled across this area when looking into the video programming that was offered.  While not much is there now (mainly video clips) my bet is that BET will get into the game of web original programming and perhaps even allow some form of User Generated Content for their audience.

Artist Pages

Less like Hulu and more like a Topic page for artists.  You can find everything related to an artist on this page including where they are on the social web, see Lil Wayne for an example.  The only thing missing here is to gather news from around the web and not just BET.com.

The community section still needs some work and follows the old site’s format but we’re told other areas to the site will roll out later this year with the complete revamp to be completed in early 2010.  With the adoption of the features above the decision not to syndicate it’s programming across the web on places like Hulu is starting to make more sense on why they’d opt not to.  Looks like they are building a Hulu-like presence on their own.  Should be interesting to also see how Centric is or isn’t incorporated into the site’s content programming.  We reached out prior to publishing but have yet to get a statement from BET.com on the site’s direction and strategy.

(Disclosure:  Black Web 2.0 is the technology content partner for BET.com)