last100 » Joost

Joost admits ad-revenue defeat, trying white label biz model instead

Steve O'Hear — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:35:05 +0000

After rumors of a third change in direction, Joost, the Internet TV startup that just won’t seem to die, has announced plans to focus less on its own online video portal and instead tout the company’s newly launched white label service to “media companies, including cable and satellite providers, broadcasters and video aggregators.”

In other words, the company, which was founded by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis of Skype fame, has conceded that ad-revenue alone can’t pay the bills and, instead, hopes that Old Media will.

Interestingly, on the same day as Joost’s announced change it direction, it’s been reported that rival Hulu alone boasts 10 percent of the online video ad market.

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Joost up for sale? Old media to the rescue

Steve O'Hear — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 14:06:45 +0000

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.

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Will it be enough? Joost to ditch desktop client in favor of Web-based player

Daniel Langendorf — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 06:34:43 +0000

It’s about time. Joost, last year’s “It” online video startup, has cast aside its desktop-only client in favor of a browser-based experience.

According to Om Malik, Joost will release a small plug-in that will embed itself in a browser to allow viewers to grab files using peer-to-peer technologies. The new browser-based video player is said to provide better quality than average video sites.

Since the story broke earlier today, NewTeeVee’s Liz Gannes has had a chance to poke around new.joost.com, which is password protected. (It will not be available to beta testers for about two weeks.) In the meantime, NewTeeVee, News.com, and Tech Crunch all have screenshots and/or video of New and Improved Joost in action.

While the early, early reviews are mostly favorable — videos start playing in a few seconds, they scale nicely for full-screen viewing — it’s hard to work up any excitement for New Joost, which seems like another version of Hulu, the online streaming video joint venture from NBC and Fox.

Unlike Hulu, however, New Joost suffers from a lack of prime content. Without it, why even bother with Joost?

Joost, started by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, the two entrepreneurs behind Skype, raised an impressive $45 million back in May 2007. Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures were the lead investors. And CBS Corporation, Viacom, and Chinese billionaire Li Ka-shing also participated.

Aside from the lack of compelling content, Original Joost was hampered by bandwidth issues, a less-than-stellar desktop client, and the lack of dynamic sharing through sites like MySpace and Facebook, not IM and email. Add it all up, and the once “It” online video startup fell behind the likes of Hulu to become also-ran.

Maybe this new browser-based strategy will be enough to put Joost back in the game. Doubtful, without improved content, but certainly possible in the ever-evolving world of Internet television.

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Joost in a browser is “weeks away”

Steve O'Hear — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 17:24:58 +0000

A new version of Joost, the much hyped p2p Internet TV service from the founders of Skype, that will run in a Web browser is just weeks away, says CEO Mike Volpi in an interview with Silicon Alley Insider published today.

When Joost was first conceived of in 2006 it was pitched as the antidote to YouTube: an Internet TV service geared towards major content owners who required guarantees around copyright protection, and providing viewers with a higher quality “TV-like” experience. However, since then the online video landscape has changed dramatically, with many competitors syndicating professionally produced and network TV content online, on a mostly non-exclusive basis. And unlike the current version of Joost, the majority of competing services, such as Hulu, run in the browser and don’t require a separate download.

On that note, the new browser-based Joost will be seen as a complete re-launch of the service and a change in company strategy (see our recent post ‘Don’t turn off the life support just yet: Joost coming to the browser‘), but Volpi says that the service still has a “great brand and great content” and “ample cash to get the platform out, work out the kinks and accumulate users.”

On the issue of non-exclusive content, Volpi says that while the same programing is available in lots of places, “by packaging it and merchandising it better, hopefully we will be a better place to come to.”

At the same time, Volpi appeared to concede that, in the age of commodity content, targeting major content owners only won’t be enough to save Joost. Instead, the company will also need to “serve the purposes of the mid tail” as well:

“…the indie content, music videos, comedy channels, and so on. There are users out there that don’t know what they are going to watch today, or they want to browse in a genre. We will help them find what they’re looking for. We host a lot more indie content than Hulu — and we are doing a lot more work to distribute and sell advertising on that content.”

Read the full interview over at Silicon Alley Insider.

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Viacom seems to have cooled on Joost; is it headed to the Deadpool?

Daniel Langendorf — Sat, 24 May 2008 04:50:36 +0000

It looks as though the once high-and-mighty Joost is running out of juice.

Joost, the peer-to-peer Internet TV service that once raised $45 million in 2006 from investors such as CBS, Viacom, and Sequoia Capital Index Ventures, is revamping its tech platform [last100] with a Web-based service that requires only a plug-in to play in browsers. It’s due sometime this summer.

Currently Joost requires a downloaded desktop client to play peer-to-peer content. It works with Microsoft operating systems XP and Vista and Apple’s OS X (but Intel processors only).

The Web plug-in is clearly a move to stay afloat and relative amid the success of an online streaming site like Hulu, but two of Joost’s biggest investors, CBS and Viacom, have little to say about the service these days.

Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman was less than enthusiastic about Joost in an interview with paidContent, which asked: “Is the service where he [Dauman] thought it would be?”

“We come at Joost or any other platforms from the point of view that we cannot predict — nor did we in that case or any other case — predict which ones are going to be hugely successful, moderately successful, which won’t work,” he said.

OK then.

As for Joost, Dauman said, “They’ve been trying different things. “They’ve been tweaking the model but we’ve certainly been happy with the relationship.”

Nothing like the avoidance jig.

Will Viacom invest in round two? PaidContent doesn’t think so, leaving Joost’s future and ability to raise second-round funding uncertain.

“We did receive equity in connection with our original deal and we’re happy where we are,” Dauman said. “I don’t think it’s fair to them for me to comment.”

So much for a glowing endorsement.

Investors like CBS and Viacom aside, another sign of Joost’s imminent Deadpool status comes from consumers who were once enthusiastic about Joost’s service and potential. Now they’re saying things on various blogs like:

“It [Joost] is like soooo 20 minutes ago. Hulu is much better.”

And:

“Joost — that was so Thursday.”

And:

“I have it installed on my laptop but I don’t think I’ve used it in the past 6 months. Thanks for the reminder to un-install.”

Ouch.

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