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Joost, the troubled online video site launched by the founders of Kazaa and Skype has been quietly sold for an undisclosed sum to an online advertising firm.
Adconion Media Group said Tuesday it acquired both the distribution technology that makes Joost function and the Joost trademark. The dozen or so remaining employees Joost kept on will become Adconion employees and help the site continue some of its entertainment focus.
Joost’s business plan was based on ad-supported programming, but with the 2008 economic crisis causing the bottom to drop out of online advertising, the company couldn’t sustain itself. Efforts to refocus on online video delivery for businesses also proved challenging. Joost has been on the sales block for months, with cable operators Comcast and Time Warner Cable approached about a possible deal. But both cable operators signed on to the TV Everywhere concept instead.
About 12 Joost employees — the majority — were given jobs at Adconion, which plans to continue operating Joost.com as an entertainment site. Presumably most of the online advertising that remains will be managed by Adconion itself.
Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, the founders, initially envisioned Joost as a peer to peer sharing site for video, but didn’t fare well at a time when many online video sites had left the peer to peer model behind for direct delivery of video.
Other stories of interest:
- Joost is Toast: Company Shifts Business to Serve Cable/Media Companies With Their Own Online Video Services
- AT&T Joins the Parade of Online Video Portals
- Let’s Dialogue: Coping With Peer-2-Peer & Video Usage On Broadband Networks
- No More Online Video for You, Unless You’re a Cable Subscriber…
- Comcast-NBC Deal: Hulu’s Free Online Video Days Could Be Numbered
I love my computer. I can not remember the last time I saw an
ad. Just empty white blocks where ads were. No ads no pop ups
no nothing except content. Once in a while content is hid in ads
but so small an amount to worry about. If a web site has to go that
low maybe its not a site I really should be interested in.
You do realize that as a web publisher they depend on advertising revenue to pay the bills at a minimum for their hardware (servers) and bandwidth that you’re using by visiting the site. That’s not even taking account their time. It’s either advertising or direct payment via subscriptions if you want to see quality sites continue to run.