Joost v. Babelgum
Babelgum has pushed itself public yesterday. On the surface it looks very similar to its more famous competitor, Joost. Both are P2P IPTV applications that let you flip through channels and shows streamed to your computer. Both are backed by deep pockets and big names. In Joost’s corner, Skype and Kazaa veterans Niklas Zenstrom and Janus Friis with $45 million in financing. Babelgum was started by FASTWEB founder Silvio Scaglia with $13.2 million invested.
Yet while the market and pedigree may be similar, the execution in each case differs.
The most noticeable difference between the two has been between the content each is streaming. Joost had the fortune of early hype and pulling together some big content deals from Viacom, CNN, Sony, and the NHL. They also have the benefit of some large media companies, CBS and Viacom, as investors. Similar to when Joost first launched, Babelgum currently streams more generic content from providers like the AP and National Geographic. The latest content deal of note has been Spike Lee screening some of his movie footage on the network.L33tdawg: I've been playing with Joost on and off for the past month or so both on Vista as well as on OS X - so far it's been a very pleasant experience; at least on the Windows side of things. The OS X client is a helluva lot buggier as compared to its Windows counterpart which hopefully will be addressed once the software comes out of beta. If there's one 'complaint' it would be the lack of a preferences pane from which you could set simple things like buffer size/time and other little connection/performance settings.
