Flash-Based Online Joost: How’s It Going?

Joost was once the media darling of the digital industry, especially on the ad side. But the arrival of Hulu changed that. The reason? Hulu required no download, whereas Joost had a fairly heavy download requirement. Part of the reason for that was the ability to offer a higher quality viewing experience, but there were other factors as well.

Many consumers are reticent to download things to their PCs, with the result that the interested universe in Joost IN THAT FORM turned out to be much smaller than the number of people willing to visit and watch things at Hulu.

Joost’s download did bring with it some cool features like real time chat as you watched a vid, and the ability to download programs and view them later, when not online. But overall, the market spoke, and spoke Hulu.

In mid September Joost launched a browser based offering requiring no download, and since that time, I have often wondered how it was doing. Well, here’s the Quantcast screen:



Clearly Joost remains committed to their social media layers – which may offer a compelling reason for people to choose one venue over another. Whoever the eventual winner, it's nice to see Joost getting some big boosts in daily visits as a result of moving away from the download model.

I also like it that all the video sites are not cookie cutter copies of one another.

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