Tuesday, October 14, 2008

JOOST GOES WEB . . . TOO LITTLE TOO LATE

The news of Joost's move from desktop application to Flash-based web offering isn't causing all that much of a stir because, well . . . they're comin' to the party at the stroke of midnight - and we all know what happened to Sleeping Beauty!

As one of the early beta users of their desktop product, I quickly gave up using it because of the sheer number of issues I was having with it - from logging in to accessing and watching videos. And as a member of their database, I would have expected to get periodic emails keeping me updated about all the goings on there. The one saving grace is that my user name and password still work on the site -- but it's not really gonna do me much good 'cause I don't plan to visit Joost all that often going forward. Is the content really all that different than what we've been consuming from other sites (YouTube, Hulu, etc.) for over a year now? If it is, it sure wasn't obvious to me.

So my prediction is that Joost won't last through next year - or if it does it won't even come close to being profitable. If only I had $45 million to play with, I could pretty much guarantee that I'd be able to build a profitable business. Open checkbook anyone?!