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News
Joost Could Joust With Apple. Or Boost.
Monday, February 12th, 2007 at 2:00 PM - by John Martellaro
The television industry is nervously watching a new offering from Sweeden's whiz kids, Niklas Zennstr�m and Janus Friis, called Joost. Joost is a P2P sharing system that runs on on a computer just like Skype and KaZaA and delivers what people like about old-fashioned TV. It could be an even bigger disruptive technology than Skype according to the Economist in a story posted Thursday.
Joost ignores the two most popular business models used for Internet video. The first, used by, for example, Apple with iTunes, allows the customer to pay for and download a TV show or movie. They get to keep it. Amazon and Wal-Mart have a similar service. The second method is a subscription to a streaming service. This is done by Netflix in its new offering for movies.
But Mr. Fredrik de Wahl, Joot's cuurent boss, explains a different model. None of the above methods "has much to do with the experience of simply watching TV, which most people enjoy. Unlike the download or streaming approaches, he says, "TV is not about buying today what you want to watch tomorrow, it's about turning it on and watching."
Joost follows the traditional TV model as well with commercials. But instead of the current 18 minutes per hour (in the U.S.), Joost limits them to 3 minutes. And Joost has channels, just like conventional TV. The difference is, the show starts when the viewer is ready. Viewers can even chat with buddies while they watch the same show.
There is one catch. Right now, Joost is limited to viewing on a computer screen. The Apple TV isn't a solution yet because it can, currently, only draw from content in the iTunes library.
Joost may be just the latest experiment, like YouTube, and become absorbed and modulated. Or it could change TV forever, and it all depends on where the advertising revenue goes. The Economist points out that "According to iSuppli, a market-research firm, internet downloads will claim more than one-third of the market for on-demand video by 2010.... So just as internet telephony has been bad for traditional phone companies, this "internet bypass" could be bad for the "on demand" video services being offered by cable-TV and telecoms firms over their networks."
Where Apple fits in depends on how they enable Apple TV's access to a computer. Right now Apple holds the Apple TV keys. If a company wants to get their content from their system into the Apple TV, Apple can block or enable. That's something the traditional carriers will not easily achieve.
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