Joost Reboots, But Is It Too Late?
When Internet TV startup Joost was launched in 2007, the buzz was that it would redefine television. After all, the company was backed by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, the legendary European entrepreneurs behind music download site Kazaa and Net telephony giant Skype (EBAY). But a year later, after a variety of missteps, it's Joost that is redefining itself.
On Oct. 14, the Luxembourg company announced Joost 2.0. Chief Executive Mike Volpi admits that the company is essentially restarting from scratch because its original approach—which required customers to download a video viewer onto their PCs—was flawed. All told, Joost attracted fewer than 1 million viewers in its first year of operation. Now the company is switching instead to the industry-standard Flash video technology from Adobe Systems (ADBE), which is already used by Net TV rivals such as Hulu, owned by NBC Universal and News Corp. (NWS).
