The Digital Marketing Blog

The founders of Skype Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, after proposing a disruptive model in the telephone field and after selling their company to e-Bay, are working in an also disruptive model to create a TV platform without a cable or satellite operator, via Internet.

Originally it was known as ‘The Venice Project’ (because the decision was made in a conference room called Venice). The site were the platform was built is www.joost.com. Today “The Venice Project” remains only for some contents that you can see in the application or for the first t-shirts that were sent to the ones that gave the first feedback.
The disruptive thing about Joost is that it is thought to distribute TV content through Internet, with Peer to Peer technology. This means that the content will be stored in (and distributed by) users’ hard disks, aside from being in the main server of Joost.

So it is like Napster or eMule but for video (understanding that Napster didn’t have its own Server) as a very simple interface , in real time and 100% legal. The great advantage of the Peer to Peer technology is that the more people requesting a file the easier and faster is to obtain it (because it will be present in more hard disks.)
Joost is not available yet to be downloaded (is in beta estate). Currently it is a closed group of users that can invite other users the same way it was done with Gmail and other programs. This gives the beta subscription more virality because “it is not for everybody”.

Another interesting point is the way the amateur contents will be combined with the professional contents; the way to search and catalogue this content and the way of monetize them.

Maybe we are in front of what could be a 2.0 version of the media that can support the 30-second commercials in the coming years….