The Inquisitr » Joost

Joost gives up the ghost, goes white label

Duncan Riley — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:06:37 +0000

Joost has announced that it is abandoning ad supported streaming video and is repositioning itself as a white label video provider.

The company cited the economy as the decision behind the move, saying in a post that “it’s been increasingly challenging to operate as an independent, ad-supported online video platform.” It’s not clear when they’ll cut access to their existing database of on demand video, but at the time of writing videos were still available on the site.

The new Joost will offer its underlying video technology to other companies on a fee base, a risky move given the large number of other companies currently offering these services.

This is the third business reincarnation for Joost, who originally started as a P2P software based video service at a time online streaming video was becoming popular. Their second incarnation as a Hulu like service faltered due to Joost originally forcing users to log into the site to view videos, and a shallow range of content.

Notably their tech is anything but first class today; for example, I just tried to view a Michael Jackson video on the site and it took a solid 10-15 seconds before the video started playing, and experience I’ve always had with Joost. On YouTube and similar sites, videos start playing in seconds, if not immediately. How they’re going to offer an appealing white label service out of second class playback tech is beyond me. My prediction: Joost won’t last the year.

Joost

FriendFeed Adds New Service Support

JR — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 14:52:20 +0000

Just days after unveiling its new real-time update option, FriendFeed has announced added support for a handful of social network-style sites.

FriendFeed users can now bring in activity from Facebook, Joost, BackType, Twine, and Wakoopa directly to their feeds, the site says. For Facebook, feeds will support status updates, all posted items, and notes — though app activity, it appears, will not yet come through.

The added options now appear on the “Add/edit services” tab, alongside existing services such as Flickr, Twitter, and iLike.

FriendFeed also recently added friend list support to its iPhone interface and made some other minor tweaks, including a fix for international Google Reader importing.

FriendFeed

Wizzard.TV, Joost Partner on Video Delivery to Millions WorldWide

Dominic Rivera — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 16:30:48 +0000

Podcasting network Wizzard Media announced that it will bring a catalog of branded and independent video content to Joost, in a partnership that is expected to bring in millions of visitors worldwide.

“Joost has long been recognized as a leader and innovator in delivering superior quality video programming to the Internet,” said Chris Spencer, Wizzard CEO on making the announcement. “We are thrilled at the opportunity to join with them in extending the reach and distribution of the vast catalog of content we represent for our publishers. Our publishing partners are equally enthusiastic about the increased global distribution as well as the opportunity to generate revenues.”

Through its partnership with Joost, Wizzard Media Network’s visitors will also have the opportunity to interact with each other and form communities its content. The bottomline, which should be important, is that it will offer more opportunities for monetization to its network of video producers.

Joost, an ad-supported video platform and once dubbed as YouTube killer, recently launched a web-based version in which a small plug-in allows users to watch videos directly in the browser. Next month, all video will be viewable on Joost.com using a standard Flash player.

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