Joost Mark II has arrived. But will the additions of a browser based video viewer and social networking features help the company bounce back from a period of under performing?
The end of the Joost desktop client was rumoured a couple of weeks ago, but it’s now become a reality, with company CEO Mike Volpi outlining the new Joost in an official blog post.
Joost Mark II
So what’s changed? The first and most obvious difference with Joost Mark II is the service now being browser based rather than needing a desktop client to be installed.
For the moment, there is still a download required, but it’s only a plug-in enabling the use of P2P file transferring: designed to reduce bandwidth costs while enabling high quality video.
Joost Standard
From next month however, Joost will be offering what it is calling Joost Standard, which is still free, and still has all of the new features, but won’t require any download at all aside from the already standard Adobe Flash plug-in.
Joost has also tried to make it easier to find the videos and programmes you actually want to watch. The 35,000 videos currently available from the site will now be categorised by genre and sub-genre to narrow searches much more easily.
Video Social Network
Last but not least is the addition of a video social network. This includes a Facebook-style news feed that allows your friends to see what you have been watching.
There’s also the ability to comment on videos, favourite them, or send links to friends recommending them. The idea behind this is that people tend to watch things liked by other people in their circle of friends.
Conclusions
I’m going to be testing the new Joost over the next few days and posting a full review next week, but for now, suffice to say that this seems to be a huge improvement on the Joost of old.
Whether it’s actually enough of a change to make any difference to Joost’s fortunes, especially in trying to compete with Hulu and its wealth of sought-after content remains to be seen.
