Joost fails at social online video

Posted by: Douglas MacMillan on June 30

Viewers of online video want appealing new content. That’s why Hulu is hot and almost everything else is an experiment.

On Tuesday, Joost announced that it’s closing its consumer video site to become a white label video platform. Initially created by Skype founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis as a desktop application, Joost relaunched as a flash-based Web site in late 2008 to compete directly with Hulu. Even though it called Viacom and CBS investors, Joost never gained a library of exclusive shows from those companies in the way that Fox and NBC shows have driven the success of Hulu.

Instead, Joost sold itself as a social venue for Web TV. It was among the first launch partners for Facebook Connect, letting visitors alert their friends on the social network to what they’re watching. It encouraged users to “tag” videos and vote on whether they liked or disliked them. And it displayed a public news feed of what other Joost users are watching at any given time.

As Mike Volpi, who’s stepping down from the role of chief executive, told me in January, all of these features were designed to make Web TV more like — well, TV. “Part of the challenge of making video social on the Internet is not just hooking it up to a Twitter feed or a social graph, but making features that recreate the Golden Era of television, of watching a program on the couch,” he said then.

Apparently, that experiment failed.

While Hulu has some social elements, like the ability to review clips, those features are secondary to the site’s focus on compelling content. Great new shows, I would argue, are the main reason Hulu is able to ratchet up its number of visitors, attract new partners, and explore the possibility of new revenue streams.

TrackBack URL for this entry: http://blogs.businessweek.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/