Why Joost P2P was never going to work

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "travis kalanick" <travisk () gmail com>
Date: December 18, 2008 9:55:08 PM EST
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Why Joost P2P was never going to work

Dave, for IP:
________________________

http://swooshing.wordpress.com/2008/12/18/why-joost-p2p-was-never-going-to-work/
Since the late 90's, p2p as a term has gone from a definition of  
communication between to pc's to pretty much anything.

Particularly in the area of entertainment & media, companies have  
mindlessly bundled content access and application experience/UI with  
p2p infrastructure. It is this mindless coupling of the two that  
brought down Joost's initial efforts to redefine the distribution and  
consumption of TV. After a couple of futile years, they've finally  
accepted that:

Yesterday, Techcrunch covered the final and formal demise of Joost  
P2P. And although Arrington gushed over Joost at the beginning, I just  
never did get the strategy.  From the point of Joost's public  
unveiling in 2006, I told friends and colleagues that the bifurcated  
model was doomed. . .

P2P hype has confused a lot of folks who bundle the term p2p with  
anything and everything under the sun.  Creating a p2p infrastructure/ 
delivery service, and building a content business, are 2 ENTIRELY  
different businesses.

It is the equivalent of a Television network building out a Tier-1  
backbone infrastructure.

If Joost were to truly succeed at a content distribution portal–which  
requires expertise in content licensing, user acquisition, branding,  
playback/navigation experience– they would simply go to a vendor for  
the best p2p infrastructure. Furthermore, why should Joost spend all  
of their $$, focus, resources on building out the infrastructure, if  
they don't have the content or the users that can use it??!!

Bottom line is that start-ups have a tough enough time getting one  
business right. It made no sense (even at the beginning) for Joost to  
go after two businesses, especially with all of the barriers that P2P  
presents –ESPECIALLY having to get users to install a client vs. just  
simply clicking and streaming which they can freely do at YouTube,  
Hulu, etc..

I'm pretty surprised that Niklaus Zennstrom went down this path. He's  
a truly great entrepreneur, but missed the boat on this one.  It's  
good to see that Joost has tightened their focus on the core value  
proposition - building an online audience around high-value TV  
content.  Maybe this will help turn their fortunes around.

It's about time they joined the party.






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