So much for Joost’s carefully prepared plans to release a browser version of their TV over IP service later this month. News leaked this morning that Joost would be abandoning their year old XUL based desktop client in favor of a browser based service that’s more like Hulu and YouTube. Users will still be required to download a plugin that facilitates P2P transfers of files, which is still an adoption hurdle. But at least users can watch videos directly in their browser.
Joost isn’t just moving to a browser format. They’re also creating a video based social network complete with Facebook-style activity streams that shows you friends what content you are watching, commenting on and “shouting” (see last screen shot above).
The new site, which is password protected, is at new.joost.com. We’ve obtained screen shots of the service, below. We’ve also created a video which will be up shortly.
Update: Here’s a video demo of the new Joost
sweet!
flash or silverlight? what do they use?
finally
Looks cool
Bit better than the present one!
Meh. I was really excited about Joost two years ago, but in a world with Hulu and about 8000 user-contributed video sharing sites, I’m not sure I see the value to the user. I mean, I see how p2p is good for Joost, but what benefit does it offer me? Especially when I have to install some janky browser plugin?
So beautiful!
That looks good! I might start using them for videos as well.
Joost picks include “ROBOT CHICKEN”
For us non Americans, this looks interesting. I’m going to check it out
HD (Or even simply, not crap) quality would be nice for people who watch stuff from their PC on a TV. I’m curious to see how the quality for this will be when I get home today
You can get into new.joost.com by typing in Joost for the username and joost for the password.
I’d written off joost, thinking it was petered out after the Stage6 was done. But the design looks pretty good and functional. If the stuff I see here gets rolled out with some content and a strong community builds it will start spreading by word of mouth. Now if only someone would upload that damn Juice Newton concert from 1982 that I’ve been dreaming about. Why do you taunt me, Web? Why!!!??
They had to do it otherwise they would have lost out of gr8 business opportunity
Okay… so Techcrunch… You’ve finally got me browsing your other crunch sites now that you’ve reskinned the home page. And i would be clicking back and forth between all of them to see the latest in each categories, which in turn would be great for your time on site and page views, considering that a large percentage of your guests would do the same.
So why hasn’t the skin effected all the crunch sites yet? I keep having to hit back to find out which other sites are available.
Word to your motherboard,
B
I uninstalled Joost months ago and haven’t missed it since. The demo looks interesting, but it is something I would more likely do inside Facebook. It seems a bit iLike’ish.
I like the demo, will start using for content soon. I got rid of joost months ago.
I just went and looked at Joost again for the first time in months. If you compare their shows with Hulu, you see that Hulu’s show are about what you’d see on cable around 10 or 11 PM. Joost’s shows are what would be on at about 2 or 3 AM. There’s probably money to be made in what Joost is offering, especially since they’re making users shoulder some of the distribution costs, but it’s not exactly “prime time” stuff. If you look at the content offerings, YouTube’s got the low end (user generated, short clips) and Hulu has the high end (full length movies and TV, near HD quality). Joost’s getting squeezed from both ends. Not a great place to be.
Around 1:40 is pretty funny. Can’t hear shit as far as what you’re saying.
Joost… dropped off of the radar a bit recently. New design looks good, but… yawn… too little too late and far too little content.
Poor Joost. Beaten silly by Miro and Hulu.
nice idea the p2p thing, others delivering it better.
One major pet peve; it may be a beta, but it persists in running (without asking) joosthelper in the background even after i have left the site, consuming my ram and presumably my bandwidth.
not cool at all.
If you are on a mac using Firefox, DO NOT INSTALL THE JOOST PLUGIN, it will crash your browser and you will have to completely uninstall firefox and reinstall it.
well they haven’t actually launched it yet so you can’t really blame them. that being said, it hasn’t crashed my mac/ff combo yet.
Ok, it MAY crash your browser and you MAY have to reinstall Firefox - your right though it was my own stupidity for finally checking on a private beta for once=)
Well they have their work cut out for them, for one that plug-in needed is a bad move - that stops me from installing a lot of stuff, as I’m sure it stops a lot of people.. (spyware fears and stuff)
Also hulu.com does not need no plug-in and this new joost is not really that different from youtube, just with much less speed, another bad move.
( I’m just saying your going to have to get your server game up, because streaming from other users didn’t work to good for the app so I’m not sold on it working great with this new browser)
as I’m writing this I’m watching a video on hulu.com -
Triumph at the Republican National Convention, Part 1 (9/4/08)
Late Night with Conan O’Brien - http://www.hulu.com/watch/3348.....art-1-9408
just priceless… how can you really compete with that… the site’s amazing, they got their work cut out for them, I wish them luck.
-but it may just be a case of too little too late…. I think for the people working at Joost the net might just be moving too fast for them, because they just don’t seem to get it.
I think they will again get a few users, but for something that has such huge potential this is going to fall way short.
They already need to redesign.. make the player wider… 824 x 318 and look cooler, curve the edges and re-due the buttons on the player, they need a much better look. (something that just slides down from the bottom of the player in flash - when you move your mouse over the video)
I can think of a Lot more suggestions but what’s the point I’m sure their not listening anyway… so on that note let me just say I wish them luck.
-Drop the plug-in
@Crazyglues: The plugin is how they can take advantage of P2P to stream higher-quality video at lower bandwidth cost to them. I doubt that’s going to go away, but I haven’t gotten to see for myself yet if the quality is better as a result.
It’s a step in the right direction for Joost to move to a browser based model, but it’s unfortunate that they’ve apparently removed the chat function as well. Lycos Cinema is another browser-based site for watching movies, television, and other professional video content, and includes interactive elements such as letting users watch programs online with friends at the same time, from multiple computers, and chat live while doing so.
Looks really cool
looks a lot like Hulu if you ask me … except apparently with a client-side download (and crappy content).
Joost was so 12 months ago.
For me, the best part of Joost was the fact that it was a stand-alone app that I could run on my ‘media centre’ Mac Mini connected to my TV and control it with the remote.
Becoming just another video web site makes it useless to me, and I have to wonder who is going to use it when it still requires downloading a plugin, when the competition “just works”.
Now Joost is a plugin that will run in any modern Browser (it ran in Chrome the afternoon it was launched ) Im sure that some smart developers will be now be able to inergrate the Joost plugin into a Media Center front end like XBMC that can handle Python Scripting , Javascript ,Flash ,RSS feeds and HTML Markup on Windows and Mac and in the near future Linux .
joost was overhyped by everyone, including techcrunch, and the truth is nobody on main street has even heard or joost or ever will
joost, surely you mean ‘jest’
not sure about that
Thanks for this post. I used it as a reference on my tech show.
http://dailybuzz.mobuzz.tv/shows/ipods_and_zunes
Ok I just found out they’re killing the standalone Joost and I’m crushed! I love this standalone app. The UI is so graceful on my Powerbook. Now it’s going to be just another web site in a world of too many YouTubes. I actually enjoy all the weird content as well.