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Three years ago when Joost launched it was only a desktop client that could be used to watch TV shows, mostly older ones.  Later, with the huge success of Hulu, Joost decided to switch its model to a flash player similar to that of Hulu.  Now it’s being forced to change its model once again since it doesn’t have nearly enough traffic to compete with Hulu and YouTube, and not enough advertising money.

Joost is changing from its current flash-based player that competes with Hulu to a platform provider.  It will be licensing out its technology to other companies.  Most likely those other companies will be broadcasters that don’t want to put their video on Hulu, or who just want a piece of the $1.1 billion dollars being spent on online video ads this year.  The new direction also comes with a new CEO, Matt Zelesko, who is currently senior vice president of engineering, the closing of the Netherlands office, and possibly substantial lay offs.

When Joost launched it was a big deal, not necessarily because of what it did, but because it was from the guys who created Kazaa and Skype.  The desktop client wasn’t bad for beta software, and seemed to have a bit of promise.  But then Hulu came and sucked in everything it could.  While it is sad that Joost is being forced to change for a third time, it’s hard to say it wasn’t eventually going to happen.  Even though Joost turned itself into somewhat of a Hulu clone, it just could get traffic.  I know at least I only ever see the site when there’s some sort of news about it, which is usually bad news.

Read [NY Times]