John Seabrook

By the time of the Civil War, there were many kinds of apples growing across the United States, but most of them didn't taste very good, and as a rule, people didn't eat them. Cider was cheaper to make than beer, and many settlers believed fermented drinks were safer than water. Everyone drank hard cider.

When Spotify launched in the U.S. in 2011, it relied on simple usage-based algorithms to connect users and music, a process known as 'collaborative filtering.' These algorithms were more often annoying than useful.

We're simple-minded, the team at Hulu, which is, we think if we can obsess over quality and build a better mousetrap, that good things will happen. Users will adopt the service, advertisers will see great value in it, and that's what we're seeing.