Blogging

Joost isn't letting the public try out the site yet but that will change soon.

(Credit: Joost)

Finally, Joost is going to correct the error that badly hobbled the Web-video service many once considered to be a serious YouTube competitor.

Joost is planning to launch a new site later this month that will feature a browser-based plugin and will no longer require users to watch via the company’s much maligned desktop client.

CEO Mike Volpi acknowledged in an interview with CNET News.com that the desktop client was one of the company’s numerous missteps but the new browser-based player would provide ease of use, a high quality video experience, and more content. The new site, according to Volpi will even be less taxing on laptop batteries.

But the big question that Joost must answer is whether the site overhaul comes too late to catch Hulu or YouTube.

Joost pounced onto the online-video scene with seemingly the right combination of founders, investors and technology. The media instantly christened them legitimate YouTube killers.

The startup was the brainchild of Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström, the team that created Skype and Kazaa. Among the backers was mega-media conglomerate, Viacom. Joost was powered by the same peer-to-peer technology that turned Skype and Kazaa into the most disruptive forces in the telephone and music sectors respectively.

The public wasn’t impressed. The content offering was thin, the player stalled and relied on the desktop client, which meant you couldn’t just log on to the Web from any computer to access your Joost account.

Volpi came on a year ago and not much changed until January, the company’s CTO left and Volpi initiated a house cleaning.

Over at Hulu, the company started by NBC Universal and News Corp, launched last spring to glowing press reviews. The site’s traffic has continued to mushroom since and a report issued this week by LiveRail, reported Hulu is probably already generating as much revenue as YouTube, which launched in 2005.

More to come

Originally posted here:
About time: Joost to launch browser-based player

Tags: advertising, crave, downloads, entertainment, environment, global-warming, home, joost-to-launch, media, microsoft, networking, news, reviews, search, security, Uncategorized, webware, whats-new, wireless, youtube

This entry was posted on Friday, September 5th, 2008 at 4:24 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.