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Joost, the once-hyped video service that was supposed to rival YouTube, is scaling back: Mike Volpi is out, the majority of the employees are laid off, and the company announced it’s shifting from a consumer focus to offering a white label technology and distribution service.
The Joost.com portal site will stay open, as an ad for the company’s hosting and distribution services, which it will try to sell to cable and satellite providers, broadcasters and video aggregators. “This technology and service offering will support content owners’ efforts to build comprehensive branded environments online”, they explain.
Once Joost also had high hopes to become the premium video destination on the web –a space that’s now largely occupied by Hulu.
In 2007 Joost raised $45 million from the founders of Skype and an array of high-profile investors and media companies, including Sequoia Capital and Viacom.
Joost was initially supposed to deliver copyrighted content via a peer-to-peer distribution system and a player that users downloaded to their desktops. But YouTube, and later Hulu, conditioned users to watch video via their browsers, and Joost’s software never caught on. By last fall, Joost began offering video via the browser like everyone else, but it has never been able to generate a significant audience, being well behind rivals like Hulu, MetaCafe, Veoh and DailyMotion.
Now Joost will focus on providing an end-to-end solution for media companies to publish video under their own brands. “Media companies around the world are embracing internet-based video portals as a key path to distribute their premium video, but building a world-class video portal is increasingly difficult and expensive.”
In addition, “Joost plans to make its white label video platform commercially available to media companies around the world. Joost plans to make its white label video platform commercially available to media companies around the world. This offering will provide a solution for companies looking to build a branded experience for their content on their own site as well as other sites and platforms in their distribution networks.”
But the move seems doomed since Joost is already enlisting another white-label video provider, Ooyala, to manage its ingesting, transcoding and metadata management.
YouTube Offers Publishers Links in Overlays
Now YouTube offers publishers links in overlays, allowing to drive traffic back to their site.
Call-to-Action overlays is intended for a sale, a sign-up, a donation, or any other response in which users take action on your website.
Adding it is easy: First, run a campaign to promote your video on YouTube; then, go to the Video Details page under My Videos and fill out the fields in the section marked “Call-to-Action overlay”. “All you have to do is include a short headline, ad text, a destination URL, and upload an optional image, and the overlay will appear whenerver someone watches your video,” YouTube explains. Clicks on the overlay will be tracked in YouTube Insight.
CBS News Launches New Design
CBSNews.com has launched new design. The new grey look features multimedia, lots of photos, blogs, video, a real time Twitter feed of news, and new series of Web video program. It also provides easy navigation to the news section.
“The new CBSNews offers a more visually rich and navigable presentation of the news as it happens. At the top of the home page, we have rotating images of the top stories, a stack of latest headlines, exclusive content from CBS News, and carousels of the news in photos, the latest videos and additional news stories and features.”
AMC Launches AMC Digital Media, and Acquires Filmsite.com and Filmcritic.org
AMC continues to develop its online movie presence with the launch of AMC Digital Media and the acquisition of two film websites: Filmsite.com and Filmcritic.org. The sites, along with amctv.com, provide film reviews and analysis, news, blogs, user-ranked movie lists, and web apps based on network series like Mad Men and Breaking Bad.
"These latest acquisitions reinforce our ability to create an entertaining, interactive online experience that celebrates all things movie and story," said Mac McKean, AMC's V.P. of digital media and content.
