Joost has gotten more hype pre-launch than any start-up company I can remember, and here I am contributing to it. Officially Joost may have made its commercial launch announcement earlier this week, but isn’t actually be available to everyone yet. If you’re still looking for an invite, I too now have 999 available in my invite widget. So promise to visit my other blog on occasion, drop a line in comments, and I’ll send out as many invites as I can.
Along with the commercial launch, Joost has announced new content deals with Turner and Sony to bring CNN content, full-length shows like CSI and Beavis & Butthead (do we really need to relive the 90s?) and clips like Sports Illustrated Swimsuit videos among others to the Joost screen. Commercials also started showing up on Joost yesterday.
Joost’s pros and cons have been covered pretty extensively, and by and large Dave and I agree with everyone’s assessments: There’s not enough good content and the full-screen mode is irritating. (I don’t like the navigation in general, but I think that’s more of a style and personal preference issue.) Still, Joost is potentially introducing P2P video delivery to a whole new audience. I’m interested to see how it tests bandwidth capabilities and what the reactions of cable and telecom operators will be. Are we about to see significantly more service suspensions?