

What Went Wrong With Joost? - mattjung
http://gigaom.com/2009/06/30/what-went-wrong-with-joost/

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jasonkester
Joost died because it didn't do what it said it did: Let you watch TV on the
internet.

It let you watch little snippets of things you weren't interested in. I
downloaded the client because I lived in Spain at the time without a
television. I tried to use it a few times, but there was never anything on it
worth watching. Certainly no network television. None of the sports that it
promised. Basically, nothing at all to watch.

Then Hulu came along with a thing that let you watch TV on the internet. The
rest is history.

~~~
joezydeco
I was all excited about Joost when the first stories about it were circulating
on the net. I signed up for the beta. And waited. And waited.

Then I could finally download the client (that's another strike in itself),
then discovered it wouldn't run on my older hardware. That's when I gave up.

Hulu had a much shorter private period, much laxer signup rules, and didn't
need a dedicated client player.

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mdasen
Really, what went wrong was that Joost didn't get the content they needed.

Sure, one can quibble that they didn't act like a startup or that people
didn't want to download a player and wanted to use their browser, but really
it just didn't get content.

Hulu, while not taking anything away from their impressive execution and
reliability, owes most of its success to Fox, NBC and others putting loads of
content on it.

~~~
marksutherland
"In the end, however, it all boiled down to a lack of content." Last sentence
in the article and a fitting conclusion.

~~~
neilc
Except it's not really a "fitting conclusion" to the article: almost all the
other factors the article cites are irrelevant or inconsequential. "Too big,
too fast", "Too spread out", and so on are just quibbles: the fundamental
problem was a lack of compelling content. The rest is just incidental, IMHO.

------
yardie
...they didn't have anything compelling to watch. I tried to enjoy it but
beyond a few music videos there really wasn't much there. I think they had a
plan, they were trying to execute it but at the end of the day you either buy,
borrow, or steal the content.

I think it's sad that Viacom was one of their investors but did not offer up
any of their back catalog. Being the largest media company on the planet, even
if they gave them their B-grade shit it still would have been loads better
than what was available on joost.

------
akamaka
Joost sounds like one of those companies that's created just to get VC money
and get sold to someone gullible.

If the founders had truly wanted to build something that helped their
customers, they could have done it without $45 million in funding, as they had
when they created Kazaa and Skype.

~~~
jexe
I don't think they had sinister or non-genuine intentions; I think they were
deluded by their previous successes that this would be a clear win, and went
fast into it without considering the obvious (to us now, at least). They were
mistakenly trained to think that P2P was their technical-advantage hammer that
they could hit every nail with.

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stevoski
Joost is a good example showing that buzz, money, and fame can't beat good
content. Content is still king.

~~~
jerf
While I don't entirely disagree with that, it should be pointed out that Hulu
has _also_ executed. It's not like it is "Hulu with content and no execution"
vs "Joost with execution and no content", and then a fight to see who wins. It
sounds more like "Hulu had content and execution" and "Joost had neither", and
that matchup doesn't really provide any object lesson to anybody beyond the
rather obvious "You really ought to bring _something_ substantial to the
table".

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anigbrowl
Am I the only person that thinks their silly name didn't help?

OK, lots of sites have silly names, but whereas Hulu had a big ad campaign to
make sure you knew it was pronounced 'hooloo' rather than 'huhluh', Joost is
just confusing.

I assume the correct pronunciation is like 'juiced', which makes me wonder why
they didn't buy it (juiced.com is just parked with generic ads). Maybe it's
because I'm European, but whenever I see the name, I can't help reading it as
'Yoost' (this is how it would sound in Dutch, and the company is Dutch). If I
were Latino, I might read it as 'Hoost'.

It just doesn't feel comfortable...talking about it with a friend over the
phone last year went like this:'-You spell it j o o s t. - Say what? -like
boost with a j. -oh...that's stupid'. I realize this seems like a trivial
complaint, but I think there's a fine line between a clever name that uses the
momentary 'huh?' reaction to become memorable (eg google), and one that just
creates confusion.

Great article overall, and a cautionary tale of what can go wrong with the
'just do it' approach.

------
prakash
Content was just one part of the equation. The larger problem was that Joost
assumed people would download a client, after all they did it with Kazza &
Skype. By then, the dynamics of the consumer had changed (thanks in large part
to you-tube) -- people didn't want to download software to watch videos.

Just because something worked for you in the past, doesn't necessarily mean it
would work in the future. Joost could have done a plug-in similar to
flash/silverlight that was a one-time download, this plug-in could have done
all the things their download client would have done.

Hindsight, of-course is 20/20. It will be interesting to see what else they
build using the core from JotID.

~~~
brk
I don't think the client interface was the "larger problem" at all.

Their client was a one-time download, just like the plugin you suggest. I
downloaded it, installed it, and then after that it was really never a
considered decision again.

While some people think "the browser" is the universal client for every
conceivable app, I think that is far from realistic or optimistic.

And I can almost guarantee you that if Joost had a client you needed to
download every single time you wanted to watch something AND put in a 12
character alpha-numeric key BUT had an in depth library of high-quality
content, people would be gladly using it today.

I tried Joost for a while after I got an early invite. The stand-alone client
and associated bugs and quirks never mattered to me so much as the fact that
there was nothing compelling on Joost to watch.

~~~
alain94040
After all, iTunes _is_ a client you need to download once. Hasn't hurt Apple a
bit.

------
jrnkntl
Content == key.

If all you can get are some unknown documentaries, odd irrelevant 24hr news
bulletins, wannabe mtv channels then you're pretty much dead from the start.

------
davi
_Hulu ...offered higher-quality video and used content from its backers, NBC
and Fox_

'nuff said. The rest is a laundry list.

------
halo
Keep one eye on Joost. If Hulu gets too popular they could leave themselves
open to accusations of anti-competitive practices and forced licensing of
content to other vendors at equivalent rates, at which point Joost will have
an advantage as a company that already has the infrastructure.

------
marcofloriano
The founders are just focused at earning money in my opinion. They realized
that what is most important at the business world is earn money very early.
They moved away from the initial concept of startups to a more like enterprise
thinking. Different worlds with different priors. A startup focus on product,
an enterprise on investors. And the most important thing, a huge part of the
game comes from luck, but most part of the initials tend to think that it´s
all about their skills, and, because already did before, they can do again ...
it´s not like that. It´s not just about your skills, but about luck too ... so
what they need to do is just shut down that try and start the next. Ouch ! But
there´s a problem ... they are no an startup, they are an enterprise so they
have to act like that, they need to do what they do instead, so they probably
have to stick with the mistake until the end.

------
zandorg
The client ran like a dog on my machine, and was some kind of rainbow
interface. Bizarre!

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rnernento
There was nothing to watch...

