Tech & Biz

Joost Gives Up on P2P

by Jordan Yerman | December 18, 2008 at 07:14 am

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Joost began life as an online video portal which used a P2P desktop client to show shared videos.

However, Flash became monarch of the online video-viewing realm, and Joost then joined the Hulu and Youtube set by offering a flash-based web portal. Today, Joost announced the end of its grand P2P experiment. With Other portals more popular, it remains to be seen how Joost will survive.

Instead of streaming video through the Joost website, users would download a Mozilla-based client and watch it there instead.

It also meant that Joost didn't need to worry about overloading servers while showing live events - users would just grab the stream from others automatically.

But Joost bet wrong, as the whole world, led by YouTube and then Hulu, got comfortable with Flash as the delivery method for video. Showing video on Flash meant users could deep link to specific videos, and also embed stuff they liked on their own sites. With the benefit of hindsight it all seems sort of obvious.

When Joost first launched, I was psyched. Very psyched. However, I could never get it to actually play a video.

I humbly admit to schadenfreude, and now, two years later, my own inbox is beset with bug reports... it's like some sort of Greek tragedy or somethin'.

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Jason Sanders

at 11:17 on December 18th, 2008

I'm still crossing my fingers for a more streamlined version of Flash. As much as I love YouTube and Vimeo, the second I start up a clip my laptop's fans begin buzzing and the battery life quickly drains, trying to supply the CPU with energy to generate enough heat to kill several million sperm.