Joost

Lore & Background

Joost began development in 2006 with teams of about 150 software developers in roughly six cities worldwide, including New York City, London, Leiden, and Toulouse. The service signed up more than a million beta testers by July 2007, with a launch scheduled for the end of that year. Content partners during the beta included Warner Music, Indianapolis Motor Speedway Productions, and Endemol. In February 2007, Viacom entered a deal to distribute content from MTV Networks, BET, and Paramount Pictures. The initial desktop player was based on XULRunner and used the ZAP Media Kit for audio; the peer-to-peer layer for on-demand video came from Joltid, the same company that provided Skype's peer-to-peer layer. A live video peer-to-peer layer was developed from scratch, first trialed during March Madness 2008. Video playback used the CoreCodec CoreAVC H.264 decoder. Joost soft-launched its Widget API on 29 August 2007 under a non-copyleft open source license.

Reader's Guide

Joost represented an early attempt to deliver television-quality video over the internet using peer-to-peer technology, shifting distribution costs from content owners to users. Its founders' prior success with Skype and Kazaa gave the venture high visibility and substantial funding, including $45 million raised shortly after launch from Sequoia Capital, Index Ventures, Li Ka-shing, and CBS. Despite signing major content deals with Viacom, Warner Music, the NHL, and others, Joost struggled with licensing restrictions that limited most content to U.S. users. The company underwent multiple restructurings, changed CEOs several times, and migrated from a desktop application to a website-only model in December 2008. Its UK subsidiary was liquidated in 2009, and most assets were sold to Adconion Media Group in November 2009. The service suspended operations in 2012. Joost's legacy lies in demonstrating both the technical possibilities and the commercial challenges of P2P video distribution, as well as the difficulties of negotiating content rights in a global market.

Did You Know?

• Joost was developed under the code name 'The Venice Project' by a team of about 150 software developers in roughly six cities worldwide.
• The peer-to-peer layer for on-demand video came from Joltid, the same company that provided Skype's peer-to-peer layer.
• Joost signed a deal in May 2007 to distribute NHL content, including full game replays of the Stanley Cup Finals.
• The service had 40 advertisers, including Sony Pictures, BMW, and Sprite.