joost iptv
what happened to joost, the 2006 tv-startup by niklas zennström and janus friis (founders of Skype and Kazaa)? analysts were sure they would revolutionize internet tv. i was so happy and proud when i got my “personal invitation” and was able to login as a beta user. and now?
it got very silent around joost. they currently announced they will offer the content no more in the joost application than only web based what basically means that the project failed. they state on the website “What’s Joost? It’s a way to watch videos – music, TV, movies and more – over the Internet. We could just call it a website … with videos … but that’s not the whole story.” quite a change from what the initial idea was – to become the leading tv-channel platform.
why did joost fail? money was never an issue, the reputation was very well and the application functioned well. from my point of view joost did not see the switch from desktop to web application coming. when zennström and friis introduced kazaa and skype web technology was pretty basic; desktop applications were state of the art. due to ajax, flash and java this changed during the last couple of years. google apps are the best example of how web focused we are nowadays.
kerry vance, spokesman of joost, describes on the joost blog “The industry was much different when we set out to deliver professional video online in 2006. Bandwidth was very expensive. Content partners were relatively new to distributing their copyrighted material online.” what backs my speculation. “It was always our intention to discontinue the Joost software application.” can be seen as damage limitation than a strategy.
joost is a good example for how even most promising, well organized and money stuffed projects can end up mainstream by not seeing and understanding the upcoming trend. this is no offend against zennström and friis, they saw and understood the trend two times and are the most impressive entrepreneurs out there. still it is salving to see that even the brightest entrepreneurs can be wrong once in a while.
by the way: techcrunch published some statistics about the joost website, showing an extreme boost since the announcement. my guess is that the ex-application users switched to the online version. still, as techcrunch says: joost has a heartbeat!
NBA channel on joost-application
some weeks ago i was wondering what was going on with joost. back then they had announced to dumb the application and focus on web based services – pretty much a 180° turn on the original idea.