Why Joost canceled its P2P application

Like me, you may have received this friendly email from Joost this week politely informing you that the original Joost application will no longer function as of December 19th.

That’s fine with me, I uninstalled it a long time ago in favor of Joost.com.

For those of you unfamiliar with Joost’s roots, this is a rejection of the Peer-2-Peer (P2P) model that Joost originally built itself on. In early 2007, P2P was going to be the bomb. BitTorrent (the company, not the protocol), was positioning itself as the most cost-effective way to deliver HD content; Joost was launched in the same fervor as the brainchild of the founders of P2P network Kazaa . Back then, delivering video streams cost between 25 and 35 cents per gigabyte depending on your deal with Akamai. P2P was billed as a way to cut costs down to 5 cents. 

Fast forward to today, where CDN competition and great volume deals have gotten streaming down to between 6 and 8 cents per GB. Not as cheap as P2P, but darn close, and with better control over content. Plus, your viewers don’t have to download resource-hogging P2P apps.

Streaming is the proverbial wave of the future. With 61% of the population connected via broadband, with the rise in quality of streaming, streaming is the way that the lion’s share of online content will be delivered for the next few years. By cutting its P2P app and going all .com, Joost is merely accepting the facts and trying to build an audience for itself using the simplest method — an open website. And looking at Joost’s site metrics in the few months it has been available as a dot com, it’s clear this friction-free delivery method is working for them.

In fact, streaming is so easy, we expect piracy to shift from downloading via bittorrent to streaming from sites like megavideo.com.

Why Sling.com matters

It’s a question I’ve been getting from the press since Sling.com was first placed in private beta test. “Why is Sling trying to create a website when Hulu, Veoh, Joost and others have already cornered millions of visitors?”

It’s a sensible question, but it doesn’t take into consideration Sling’s ultimate strategy.  The first issue to raise is a simple one: this is not that expensive of a site to run. The content is hosted by the content providers (including Hulu.com) so there’s no cost there. The only money they give those people is the privilege of letting them keep the lion’s share of the revenue associated with the content Sling.com is passing through.

The real point to raise, however, has to do with Sling’s secret plot to take over the world. Yes, Sling has a secret plan: they want to make it easy for you to take content from anywhere and watch it anywhere. Diabolical, no?

First piece of their plan is letting slingbox owners — the few, the proud — access their slingbox content from any Web browser, rather than through a proprietary application. This is critical. This will mean you can check your slingbox from any IP device, including iPhones and T-Mobile G1 phones. Get it? That’s a critical feature to add.

The second piece is in enabling people to watch online content on their TVs. This is not for Slingbox owners, it’s for an even smaller group: Slingcatcher owners. But it’s a very smart step, one I’ll be writing about at Forrester in early Q1 as I consider all the ways you can put Hulu on your TV set. Because the Slingcatcher lets you share PC and online content to your TV, aggregating the best content on Sling.com just makes it that much easier for Slingcatchers to access the best of the Web on the TV. It’s a small step, but it represents big thinking. 

Big thinking because once Sling can show that it has the technology in its Slingcatcher and the content on Sling.com, it will then start calling Samsung and other TV and Blu-ray makers to say, “Hey, want an Internet-connected TV strategy that puts the best of the Web on your device quickly? Partner with us!” Sling licenses the technology, pre-connects Sling.com (through a proprietary UI) to the device, and boom, instant Internet-connected TV strategy without the hassle of knocking out content relationships. It’s the same motive that led both Samsung and LG to work with Netflix. 

It’s going to be the race to watch in 2009. I’ll be tracking it: who gets Hulu to the TV, then CBS, then ABC (because that will be the order in which it happens). And all of this makes it easier for you and I to watch what we want, when we want. See why Sling.com matters now?

Happy Birthday, Hulu.com! I knew you’d make it

It’s not really a birthday party, since this is only the anniversary of Hulu.com’s beta launch. Which is all the more amazing considering how far it has grown in a year — when half of that year was conducted in private beta. Since its official launch in March, Hulu can now boast that in September nearly 150 million videos were streamed.

This is phenomenal, it’s precisely the year-end target I had for Hulu in December. Now I have to ratchet that up to 200 million. To go from 0 to 200 in under a year is remarkable. Consider that in its best months, Comcast VOD streams 300 million video views. That’s a big number. Hulu will be at the level some time next year. Without having to invest in VOD servers the way Comcast did.

That’s right, folks, Hulu is here to stay. And <bashfully> I have to admit I called it. A year ago today, I published a report called Online Video Syndicator Hulu.com Overperforms At Beta Launch. I said:

Today Hulu.com, the NBC Universal and News Corp. online video joint venture, launched a private beta test that beats our expectations of what the company would achieve. It syndicates video, enables sharing, and does it all with top-notch content and a design flare reminiscent of Apple. If Hulu can keep expenses down, the company stands as a threat to competing online TV companies like Joost, as well as old-line cable companies and telco TV entrants.

Specificallly to cable companies, I warned:

Cable companies and telco TV providers can begin the fear watch. By delivering a solution that advertisers want, syndication partners are happy to implement, and consumers will easily lap up, Hulu has assembled an experience directly comparable to that offered by cablecos and telco TV companies. Think about it: You have first-run TV shows, classic TV reruns, and movies from the back catalog. All you need is a pay-per-view option for new releases, and you might as well call Cox Communications, Time Warner Cable, or any of the rest and cancel your TV subscription while simultaneously opting for the fastest Internet connection they can possibly offer. That tells us what Hulu will offer next.

The warning is only stronger now as Hulu has even more content than it had back then and even more advertisers lining up to pay a premium on a CPM basis to participate. I hate to say I told you so…

Ironically, Comcast is a beneficiary of the Hulu experience since Hulu is the engine behind most of the content available at Fancast.com, Comcast’s online TV portal play. 

What about you? Are you a Hulu.com junkie yet? Are you doing just TV or have you browsed any of the hundreds of movies? I’m hooked on both. I’ve watched over 3 hours of video just on Hulu this week alone. That puts me squarely in the most engaged online viewer category and I have Hulu to blame.

Joost goes flash

In yet another sign of the online video times, Joost today announced it would do Flash, Web-based streaming online at joost.com rather than relying on the proprietary, P2P client it launched back in early 2007.

My take: this is the right thing for Joost to do to match the friction-free experience sites like Fancast.com, Hulu.com, and nearly everywhere else is able to provide. Requiring that people download and run a separate application (not just a plug-in, as ABC.com requires) just isn’t consistent with the ease that online video has come to offer. Sure, it made sense in early 2007 when most top content wasn’t available online anyway. But that all ended when Hulu launched.

Furthermore: the days of the proprietary video player are gone. Sorry to Miro, Vuze, and the original Veoh player. There’s no need for a dedicated video aggregation application. the only chance for such a player is in the download for offline play world, which is where iTunes sits.

Adobe Media Player, a player designed to allow the downloading of streaming video for offline playback, is going to struggle in the balance for a while as people so excited about streaming don’t see the need for it yet. One of two things has to happen there: either people will eventually see value in offline playback, or wireless broadband will become so ubiquitous that we’ll never need untethered video playback. All depends on how fast Adobe can move the ball forward and convince big content providers to release their content for secure offline playback.