The all new Joost: No download required

Posted October 15, 2008 at 08:06 PM by Shawn Ingram

Section: Video, Video Providers, Computers, Web, Web 2.0, Websites, Online Music/Video

Remember Joost?  The peer-to-peer video client made from the guys that made Skype and Kazaa?  Yeah, sometimes I forget it exists as well.  But that’s okay, because the somewhat annoying desktop client is gone.  Joost has finally gone to flash, just like Hulu and a number of other services.

Joost is touting its sort of social networking aspect to try and get people to use it.  You can use JoostFeed to watch the videos your Joost friends recently watched, or you can “Shout” about videos to your friends to tell them to watch it.  It might be a bit hard to actually use the feature unless your friends are those who haven’t already forgotten about Joost. 

One of the few things Joost has that Hulu doesn’t is actual music videos from artists and not just excerpts from musical movies.  There are some things it lacks that could be a deal breaker to some, mainly TV shows like “The Office,“ “Heroes,“ and “House.“ 

Joost does tout an extensive movie library with a lot of indie films, which is cool, but without a rating system its really hard to separate the gold from the crap, or at least the more popular stuff from the unpopular stuff.  Also, the front page plays an ad instantly upon opening it, which is a bit annoying, especially when the ads are as annoying as the Macy’s bra commercial.

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