P2P video
service Joost has decided to shift away from P2P and head towards Flash. The company will give up their efforts developing the P2P client that has so far defined Joost.
Joost, which was considered one of the most innovative start-ups in early 2007 when the beta was released, has gone through some hard times lately. Ultimately the P2P client, with its obvious benefits, had more flaws than expected. Without the ability to link to specific videos or embed them on to your own website it became obsolete.
In last September Joost launched the Flash site, which gave users the option to select between Flash and P2P. Now there’s no choice to be made. The only platform that will apparently have an own Joost client is iPhone.
Moving to Flash not only means fierce competions with tons of other online video sites, but a much larger bandwidth bill for Joost. P2P streaming was a clever idea, unfortunately it didn’t succeed - at least not in this case.
With no major proprietary content, unlike Hulu with NBC/FOX and TV.com with CBS, Joost will have even harder times ahead. And you don’t need to be an industry analyst to predict that if they don’t come up with something exclusive the story of Joost could be over.
Result for: joost
The UK-based company Velocix (formerly known as CacheLogic), has announced that beginning today it will be “offering live Streaming television content with a hybrid P2P live streaming client.”
So far live streaming has been a challenge to content providers as the audience for live streaming events are all trying to access the video simultaneously, putting a strain on resources.
The popular IPTV platform Joost recently made an attempt to live stream some NCAA “March Madness” basketball games via a partnership with CBS but “connections to CBS feeds were reported to have been dropped at inopportune periods.”
Velocix, on the other hand, offers a BitTorrent-compatible hybrid P2P client “which turns each viewer into a sort of peer host for additional viewers.” The streams are then available in Flash format or Windows Media format.
The company also says it has made deals with the BBC and Babelgum as well as Bollywood.tv, and Chic.tv.
Result for: joost
The popular music community site Last.fm has launched its own online channel for video interviews, starting a trend of original content production it hopes to continue into the future.
Dubbed Last.fm/presents, the channel will show off videos of interviews with established and upcoming artists including Moby, Santogold, Joshua Radin and Neon Neon.
The site’s co-founder, Martin Stiksel, added that the interviews will “complement Last.fm’s “music discovery experience”. He also makes the somewhat bold claim that the site is the only place where “favourite artists talk so candidly about what makes them the musicians they are today”.
The videos will be distributed by CBS and its syndicate partners Joost, Bebo, AOL and NetVibes.
Since its acquisition by CBS last year, Last.fm has been aggressively expanding its services and has signed deals with all four major labels - Universal, Sony BMG, Warner and EMI allowing the service to stream tracks for free on the site. Because of the deals, the site claims its amount of users have risen 59 percent as a result.
