JOOST INTERNET TV

Joost is a internet company dedicated to providing hundreds of channels and thousands of TV shows for free, distributed with their free technology.

Joost is the creation of Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, the same two internet pioneers that created KaZaa and Skype. KaZaa was the leader in peer to peer downloading for years and still is a major presence online. Skype is a peer to peer company providing free internet telephony across the globe, with more than 220 million users.

Zennstrom and Friis sold both of these companies, KaZaa to Sharman Networks and Skype to eBay. With the seed money raised from these two endeavors they were able to create Joost.

Joost already has over one million users, none of whom pay a dime for any of the TV programming they receive. Joost is simply a free piece of software, with no malware, spyware, adware or any form of malicious software embedded. Once downloaded and installed (which takes only minutes) all of Joost's programming is available to you, whenever you want to access it.

Joost currently is a collection of TV shows, obscure videos, along with some mainstream content and some amateur features. In addition to a search based function that allows you to find shows, there are over 150 Joost channels running free internet TV shows. Each channel has a theme, like sci-fi channels, action channels, drama channels, etc.

The company is still in its infancy and is not even out of beta. Joost is scheduled, tentatively, to exit the beta stage and go completely live this December.

What does this mean for existing TV and media companies? Well, it largely depends on the role that the media company plays. If it is a company like NBC, ABC or FOX, they probably will not be too affected. These companies give away their media content (just like Joost) and display advertising for their revenue source, which is also what Joost does. If it is a cable channel like CNN, ESPN or Spike, they probably will not be affected much at all, due mainly to the fact that they generate fresh content all the time, with their own proprietary programming. Channels like the Game Show Network or AMC, which essentially rerun shows from the past are more likely to be hurt. This type of content not only will be available on Joost, but you will be able to select when you watch, what episode you would like to watch, and other similar choices. The freedom to choose these past shows, to create your own schedule (in affect your own TV channel) and to have other online members or friends reccommend you a show, all these features will make Joost the kingdom of reruns.

Another group of media companies will be in even more trouble, at least eventually. These are the access providers to the media content, like cable companies and the satellite TV firms, like Directv and Dish Network. These media giants make their money from only providing you the vehicle to watching your shows, they do not provide original content. This is going to be a big problem for them, because once Joost has a great many Hollywood and media content firms providing lots of high quality shows (both from the past and present) then a lot of people who are paying for access to cable or satellite will simply cancel their service.

This is where Joost could become very disruptive in the field of television. Directv, Dish Network, Comcast, Cablevision and Time Warner are all good examples of large companies, with huge capital infrastructures (lots of equipment, employees, offices, call centers, vehicles) that all need a lot of money to keep going. Once again, Zennstrom and Friis have taken on an industry where a few large organizations, each with its own massive apparatus of operations is present. And the way they take these companies on is with the same extremely low budget formula.

Very smart tech guys and engineers, a single website, a single piece of easily downloaded software, and a network of users who all help and contribute to the strength of the viral network. The cost of this whole process is extremely low compared to running a standard corporation.

This story has played out twice before. First, when KaZaa was released, it started what would be the big decline in music CD sales. KaZaa became the most downloaded software program in the history of the internet. Then Janus and Zennstrom released Skype, which currently has 220 million users worldwide. This software elminated the need (and cost) of billions of old line international telephone calls, which cost telephone companies like AT&T and MCI billions of dollars.

Now television is next on the list. The methodology is not that difficult. Locate an existing demand for digital service (music, telephony, television) and create a simple program on the internet that allows peer to peer technology to make a free platform to deliver that digital product.dffff

Joost will be successful, the only question is just how successful will it be?

This is exactly the case with KaZaa, where