We already knew that sometime in 2009 Joost would run low on cash – CEO Mike Volpi said as much last December – and now five months on the Internet TV service is shopping around for a buyer, reports CNet.
Having already re-invented itself once, ditching its P2P desktop application in favor of a browser-based site powered by Flash video (just like everybody else), the company, founded by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis of Skype fame, is trying once again. This time Joost is positioning itself an ideal platform for powering the Internet TV ambitions of a cable or satellite company, according to the report. Time Warner are said to be the only party interested so far, although both companies have refused to comment.
Whether or not the CNet story turns out to be true and Joost finds a new home, only time will tell. What we do know for sure is that Joost is publicly giving itself a pat on the back, with Volpi publishing a blog entry just this week outlining the site’s progress since it relaunched as a browser-based offering. paidContent posts the highlights:
Five-fold traffic hike since abandoning the desktop player app, 15 million video views in March, “millions of hours” watched each month, improved discoverabiity, etc etc. Certainly sounds like an effort to pump Joost up – but only to mark the six months since the web-only relaunch, Volpi wrote. Still to come – “an aggressive syndication strategy”, availability on new devices and more foreign-language programming.
