Hype And Reality For Joost -- No, Joost Does Not Lead The Way With Web Video

from the i-can't-believe-what-I-just-read dept

The online video company Joost gets a ton of attention, but mainly for the fact that its two founders were the guys behind Kazaa and Skype -- and the fact that it's raised a lot of money. However, what amazed me this weekend was two separate media reports suggesting that Joost was some sort of huge success, when almost every other indication was that it had stumbled massively. First, there was Crain's New York suggesting that it was a huge deal that Joost had chosen to locate its US headquarters in New York rather than Silicon Valley, calling the company "a top online video company." Ok. Perhaps -- though it seems like a stretch. In the online video world, there's basically YouTube and then everyone else. However, the real kicker was Information Week, which bizarrely declares: "Joost is still a leader in high-quality video by any measure" under a headline declaring "Joost Leads The Way With Web Video."

Well, first of all, Joost doesn't lead the way in web video because it still hasn't released a web version. Second, the claim of it leading "by any measure" seems hard to square up with nearly a dozen reports about Joost's prospects. In fact, about the only "measure" by which Joost may be leading the internet video space is in hype (or, possibly, bandwidth consumption). By nearly all other reports out there, Joost has been in serious trouble this year, with people not finding its limited content (and need for a download) all that compelling. In response, the company has ditched most of its ambitious plans to focus much more narrowly on a short-term strategy to help the company survive. The company has also had tremendous downtime and layoffs. Even Joost's own investors don't have much nice to say about the company. In other words, it's difficult to see how Information Week can declare in any way that Joost is somehow leading the market.

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