Joost wants to beat up cable not YouTube

Jeremy Peters at the NY Times has a good writeup today about Joost (formerly The Venice Project). I have believed for a while now that YouTube won't be the answer for television online. YouTube should remain as a user-generated media site. That's where the $1.5B value comes from.

The creators of Joost come from a pretty strong background. Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis initally started Kazaa, then moved into leadership roles with Skype (where they remain today).

From the Times article:

Joost (pronounced “juiced”) (allen note: I thought it was pronounced yooste) said last week it had reached what amounts to the mother lode of television programming: agreements to broadcast programs from Viacom networks like MTV, Comedy Central and VH1. While the deal’s terms were not disclosed, Viacom and Joost will share advertising revenue.

"We are very happy with the Viacom deal because it spans all their big properties," Mr. Friis said. “It has content from their biggest properties — MTV, Comedy Central — that are very good for our demographic." (Mr. Zennstrom was on vacation and unavailable to comment, a Joost spokeswoman said.)

While I am not sure if Joost will be the winner in this market, their application (which I check out daily) is pretty strong and the video quality is decent too. I look forward to checking out the Viacom clips once they are integrated.