A new on-demand video service from the creators of Kazaa and Skype was released to the public in full earlier this week. Joost was originally unveiled in 2006 under the moniker 'The Venice Project'. The service, which had previously only been accessible to only a few thousand beta testers, is now accepting sign-ups from other users who have been sent an invitation by a tester. Testers were given an unlimited amount of invitations to send to new users who were interested in the service.
A downloaded program gives the user access to Joost's on-demand programming and the high quality of the video streams allow full-screen playback. The service is paid for by advertising, which is shown intermittently during playback of content, and features products and services from companies such as Coca-Cola, Nike and IBM.
Joost has been adding to its portfolio of channels in the last few weeks and has recently made deals with CNN and Sony to deliver news and classic programs on the network. This is in addition to a deal with media giants Viacom, who agreed to show content from their distribution channels in late February.
Joost provides programming on over 150 channels, ranging from cartoons, movies, sporting events and hit TV shows using peer-to-peer TV (P2PTV) technology, whereby the content is originally stored on a main server owned by Joost and then distributed by users to other users watching the same program.
Joost is touting itself not just as a video service, but also as a social interaction website. Each channel will have a chat room associated with it, allowing users to discuss the program they are viewing with others who are watching the same content at the same time. This may lay the groundwork for a community of Joost users who could, theoretically, gather at the same time every day or week to watch a program together and discuss its merits in real-time.
