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.

By: Larry Flynt

Larry Flynt — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 07:56:28 +0000

Guys -
1) Content: Hulu had it by virtue of its pedigree to start, and its product and technology superiority to sustain. Joost never got it.
2) Leadership: Jason Kilar, CEO of Hulu, like Mike Volpi, is also a big-company guy (Amazon), though he helped launch and grow businesses at AMZN for 10 years. He’s as solid as they come, and had enough experience in running tech projects from their inception and bringing them to consumers, not enterprises. Volpi was actually the ‘safe’ choice, since he is a deal maker. Joost knew that they would need to get content deals done, but they just couldn’t get them done in time. Kilar, with Amazon training knows how to bring products to consumers and determine what is working and what is not. He ran worldwide platforms for Amazon. If a mouse cursor moves on their property at Amazon, they know it and can figure out what you will do next!
3) Viral features: That’s a load of crap for this. Hulu is NOT successful because of its viral success. YouTube is POPULAR (though not making much money) from its viral, social nature. Buzzword whoring.
4) SEO: More buzzword whoring. Google, I bet, is not a big driver of traffic here. There are going to be enough links in, no matter what. It is true, though, that Joost made it hardER for allowing a ton of sites to link directly to their content.

The ironic part is Volpi is probably better suited for doing white-label sales now. Networks are starting to deliver their own destination properties and getting in now is going to be critical. However, Brightcove is right in there and others have squandered a lot of cash. Looks like Joost is in the downward spiral now…

By: YUvamani

YUvamani — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 07:01:14 +0000

Well put.

Before Hulu laid the finals nails on the joost coffin. Youtube had killed it. Why? because joost needed a client and it was not intuitive to share stuff and view content from anywhere.

(pre acquisition) Youtube was google friendly, had search (not that great but atleast functional) and pretty good related content. This along with amazing sharing options (hey you could just email / im / fb / embed ) the link ensured that youtube was everywhere. Hulu added great content to the same basic formula.

Interestingly when users pressed youtube to improve video quality, the founders always said that the wide availability of content i.e. reach (thanks to flash) was more important than quality.
Joost had quality not reach. Ultimately that killed it. By the time joost went browser based people had forgotten it because every tv provider had flash video on their site anyway.

By: 1stboybandfan

1stboybandfan — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:42:03 +0000

I would say it’s obvious. It has already happened with Hannah Montana. When a company like Disney has to steal through a boy band to over a pay an excutive producer Millions of dollars for a show that teachs bad cultural values, even by American Standards. Then it’s a problem, also I hate the fact they did the same thing as Joost with their stocks last year too. Hey, it’s just what BSB told me.

By: zell_101

zell_101 — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 22:22:38 +0000

Ah, hindsight.

For those of us old enough to remember, it’s interesting going back to 2007 and the general tone/feel that the trade-blogs (such as this one) were projecting on HULU and JOOST.

Let’s face it, there was that geeky-tech-newmedia thing going for JOOST. Everyone was enamored with them, even if they were having fairly poor User Experiences (even cutting them slack for their initial lack of Content, that was claimed to have been “fixed” within months)…

But, HULU, it was the ugly stepchild of “oldteevee” and people were not really very kind to it (the name was the first bit of mockery); there were all sorts of reservations expressed and not much fanfare (except, well, it was watchable compared to everything else; but, it just didn’t have that tech/geek thing going for it)…

It really felt like people wanted JOOST to succeed and HULU to fail. Really, in your heart of hearts, wasn’t that the feeling here (and most tech/media blog trades)?

By: P Cause

P Cause — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 21:50:55 +0000

All good points, but the real issue with Joost was content. Joost went to the media guys and were arrogant and didn’t udnerstand what they needed. it would up without the deals it needed for premium content. The thing we’ve all learned is that premium content is the only place to get revenue and profits in the online video space. Without content they didn’t get users or revenue.

Look at Google and YouTube. They’ve gone back and are cutting deals for premium content because that is the only way to make money. Look at Hulu. ALl premium content and they get revenue.

To paraphrase a campiagn slogan: it is all about the content stupid!

By: Grandma

Grandma — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 21:46:09 +0000

“simple, easy-to-use interface”

Hulu won because of this statement.
If you want general users to mass, it needs to be easy to work. Hulu is. Joost wasn’t.