Joost has now officially launched to the public, moving from a
Beta testing stage to one which makes the IPTV service available to
everyone, at least in principle.
It has been more than 5 months since I first began testing the
invite-only beta of Joost,
which has since accumulated 250+ channels and 15,000+ television shows.
Although the Joost software has been updated now to version
1.0,
the service makes sure to state that “Joost is still Beta software
—
there’s a lot more work to be done before we’re satisfied, and yes, you
may find a bug or two.”
In the time that Joost has been in beta, it managed to go
from
promising to a poorly-planned disaster in my point of view. Now, Joost
has received some cosmetic changes as well as a host of new features.
Will this be enough to put Joost back ahead of the competition though?
The Competition Has Hotted Up
Since April (which is when I first began testing of Joost) I
have
seen several new IPTV services pop up offering some major competition
to Joost. Microsoft
is in on the action, as well as
Babelgum, LiveStation,
Miro, WiTV and, my
personal favorite, VeohTV.
Although Veoh does not have quite as large of a selection as
Joost
claims to, it loads quickly and does not slow down my PC, which is more
than I can say for Joost.
I have been having problems with Joost for quite a while, and
although the interface looks better now, the bandwidth
problems appear to still exist, even after my upgrade to the
new version. The channel guide sports a new look and Joost also
displays featured
content on their website, now that anyone can sign up.
New Social Networking Features
Perhaps the only interesting news for this service is the
addition
of new features, which Joost is hoping will build the social aspect
among the growing Joost community.
To allow sharing of available video
content, the service has introduced Joost Links, which are the
crossover point between the Web environment and the desktop Joost
experience.
A Joost Link is a URL like http://joost.com/0440003
that can either link directly to a video or a channel within the Joost
software.
Joost provides thousands of hours of video content that can
be
streamed on demand to Joost viewers all around the world. But how can
you find your way through this huge collection? Enter Joost
Links.
Each
piece of content on Joost has an associated Web page, allowing viewers
to link, blog, tag or cross-reference these pages so that the
collective power of the Joost community can be harnessed for everyone’s
benefit.
Users can get even more social by blogging about the content
they
are watching, via a widget within the software. As seen in the
screenshot below, a transparent overlay window keeps the video playback
visible in the background.
Expect to see more third-party Joost widgets appear also, as
Joost has now launched its developer
site as well, which does a good job of explaining the
behind-the-scenes detail of the service.
Although Joost was not quite ready for the public in my
opinion, it is now out there for all to use. The Joost
team should be more worried about the overloaded P2P architecture that
needs help rather than just about providing a pretty interface.
Michael Garrett is a contributing author discussing the social networking world, his work can be found on Profy.com
