Joost

In the battle for full-length online video. There are two competitors with a shot at making it, Hulu (which I love) and Joost. No, Joost is not a web 2.0 store for steroids. It's an online video player from the guys who brought you KaZaa and Skype and it was a media darling about a year ago. I've spent this morning giving Joost a try.

In terms of content, Joost is all over the map. It has music videos, video podcasts, full length TV episodes and sports highlights. Overall, the catalog has enough to keep you busy for a pretty good amount of time, but the current stuff is not very complete. Also, there are just enough non-nude bikini girl channels to make a guy feel like he's doing something inappropriate. I'm not sure exactly why someone would want to come to Joost for that, unless they were looking for porn, but 'Sexy Clips', 'Candy Crib' and 'Motors Babes' are the #3, #11 and #14 most popular channels. Draw your own conclusions.

Unlike Hulu, Joost has a deal with CBS for their shows. I don't watch CBS, other than for sports, so I was kind of bored with the options. But, if you need an NPH fix, Joost can give it to you. But, then so can the CBS website.

If you clicked on the links above, you noticed that they took you to the Joost website and showed you what I was trying to share, but there was no video player. Joost requires a download, like it's 1999. The program works fine for browsing on your own, but loses the social aspects completely. Even with the player installed I still can't click on the show and have it launch. At least, I haven't figured it out, and I'm usually pretty good at these things.

Also, they constantly have a drop box that's trying to get me to share what I'm watching or recommending something else. A bit of a distraction, especially during Wall Strip.

If you want to use your computer for long viewing sessions, Joost allows you to create 'channels'. You pull together a bunch of videos into a queue and it will play them in order. It mimics your TV nicely, with ads only coming between shows. Annoyingly, the ads are louder than the shows! What is this, my regular TV? If I was a studio exec, and I was trying to drive adoption of a specific new service, especially one trying to compete with YouTube, I would not be as jerky as I am on tried and true TV. I think I would hold back for a bit until there was some adoption, or proof that people were watching two shows in a row, and getting up for a snack in between. If people aren't even watching one show, what makes you think they'll watch two? Luckily for shorts/podcasts/etc they don't force an ad on you between shows.

I think I'll stick with Hulu, YouTube and each network's website. I don't see myself using Joost very often, at least until they get something more entertaining to watch than the Babylon 5 Pilot.