Comments on: What Went Wrong With Joost?

By: köpek

köpek — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 15:33:53 +0000

oo yes tahnk The company took too long to realize that the client-based strategy was going to lose out to browser-based video services. Its legacy of building clients became its Achilles’ heel

By: Mark A

Mark A — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 13:11:27 +0000

I don't think anybody can compete with Youtube in online web video. Hulu is giving them a run for the money, but I don't know for how long they will be able to compete.

By: Ed French

Ed French — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 19:33:49 +0000

Dead right. Back when Joost started the consensus was that video needed P2P because of the huge bandwidth requirements (I remember a piece of analysis round that time suggesting it cost $1/GB all-in, and (pre-H264) maybe 1Mb/s for reasonable quality so you needed $0.25/hr of revenue just to cover serving and bandwidth- that’s a marginal case. But H264 and Moores law have eroded that difference so now I think everyone is looking at server distribution for video (anyone know Google’s cost/hr on Youtube?). That undermines the USP for Joost and means that no matter how well they executed the P2P model left them at a disadvantage in the real core requirement – to win the content deals. Furthermore, the only market with the scale to work (given the content-owners’ requirement to territory licensing) was always going to be the US, so the international base was maybe more of a burden than a benefit?

By: Guest

Guest — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 00:37:24 +0000

I was on the beta from Venice on… and for me the number one problem was the UI. It was horrible and despite numerous complaints, they never fixed it good enough and fast enough. For eg. if you scrolled through your channels it looped! FAIL: people like to know when lists start and stop, not go on a hamster wheel of seemingly endless options. It’s a great study in how to NOT build a UI. It assumed way too much from the user. Joost took me five minutes to figure out the UI. Hulu took me about :10 That is why it failed IMHO. Plus of course there was really no content that came close to what Hulu or Netflix on demand offers.

By: Robert MacEwan

Robert MacEwan — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 15:15:31 +0000

They generated buzz in the Linux community with true crossplatform claims. When this vaporware never arrived the community did not appreciate being lied to by Joost.

By: name

name — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 13:50:20 +0000

I checked out joost when I scored an invite code, but the software was unresponsive and slowed down my comp. So I gave up. Seemed to create new friction rather than to solve existing friction.

By: name

name — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 13:47:56 +0000

I love spam! yum! David, can you please share with us what you have learned? And could you please mention the name of your start up a half dozen times.

By: beyondnessofthings

beyondnessofthings — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:00:24 +0000

Good piece. It’s not just the content but how you deal with the people providing it. Joost lacked humility, a vital quality. It’s debatable whether the linear TV business is in decay – viewing figures suggest otherwise, the ad sales market implies certainly. But you don’t turn something that powerful on its head by marching into the offices of (still) big power players in the media and entertainment industry and giving a lame do or die presentation.

Joost failed primarily for being a vanity business. Its founders should’ve (and do) know better. Shame they disconnected from their brains when they got issued with AmEx Centurions.

By: free online virtual worlds

free online virtual worlds — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:24:22 +0000

What a great and insightful post…apparently content has always been king and will always be king!

By: VC

VC — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 12:59:28 +0000

Om, great post. Think Ravi has a point though. Don’t know Volpi but sure that he is a ‘solid exec’ given his post at Cisco and will go on to do great things. The question is – was he the right choice for a startup? I have seen this too many times…startup has momentum (and in this case money and runway) but is messy (more normal than not), pedigreed guy from large corp with name comes in and doesn’t realize he’s now playing speed chess and often relies on the wrong set of instincts. Find it difficult to believe that with the assets that Joost did have at the time a perhaps more hardened entrepreneur could not have created some value from it.

Common mistake and important lesson.

Thank you again for a great post.