joost Archive

NY-based CollegeHumor, part of IAC (Nasdaq: IACI) has picked up a major distribution deal with Joost beginning today.  CollegeHumor currently claims 6 million unique readers a month and more than 200 million monthly page views. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

CollegeHumor’s CHTV original videos will be made available on Joost through the newly launched "CHTV: CollegeHumor Original Videos" Joost channel.

This is a good move for CollegeHumor to potentially get a new stream of viewers and site visitors. Could we see CollegeHumor on VirginAmerica soon following Revision3?

The site pulls in videos from around the Web and also publishes their own original videos. Here is one of the safe-for-work videos:

The NBA (National Basketball Association) has signed a deal with Joost to operate a channel on the Joost network which will showcase some of the "instant classic" games — these are games from the last few years that are supposedly spectacular. Some of the example games on the new channel include: Los Angeles Lakers’ Kobe Bryant’s 81-point game and Cleveland Cavaliers’ LeBron James’ sensational performance in Game 5 of the 2007 Eastern Conference Finals.

Why did they decide to show instant classics instead of real classics? Because today’s youngster wants to watch LeBron jam vs Bill Walton hit from the outside. It’s all about marketing kids, marketing.

This channel will be available worldwide so other countries can view these spectacular games and the stars associated with the NBA. Oh and then they will buy more jerseys and hats and stuff.  It’s all about marketing kids, marketing.

Check out our previous Joost coverage including their partnership with Meebo for inline chat.

In the beginning, meebo was "just" a chat aggregator. Over time they have grown to add Rooms, a Platform and they are announcing a partnership tonight with Joost. Meebo will provide their Rooms technology for the 250 channels on the Joost network. Nielsen/NetRatings reports that Meebo is the fastest growing IM destination (they don’t include eBuddy in the report).

Joost presented at the NY Video Meetup last week. I noticed a much improved user experience over the initial version I tested earlier this year. If you haven’t tried Joost recently, I would try it again. Does the combo of Joost and Meebo leapfrog Hulu? If the integration is seamless, it could be pretty sweet. The part I am unclear about is whether the Meebo Rooms for the channels will be embedded into the Joost interface or a link to the Meebo room will be provided.

"Participation in community activities has emerged as one of the most significant trends in consumer behavior," said Mike Volpi, CEO of Joost. "By offering our viewers a robust channel chat option, they can chat with people interested in the same shows and subjects – and ultimately customize and enrich their entertainment experiences."

"Even in an on-demand environment like Joost, people can experience live community around popular channels and shows," said Seth Sternberg, CEO and co-founder, meebo. "According to a recent internal survey at meebo, 25% of meebo users IM while watching TV – there’s a lot more we can be doing to connect people who share a common passion around a specific show or genre."

Check out our interview with Meebo CEO Seth Sternberg.

Earlier this week was the NY Video Meetup. Somewhere around 250 NY’ers attended and viewed a variety of demos and a healthy video discussion. One thing rang true throughout – online video is HOT here in the city. So many companies, so many ideas and a amazing level of excitement/passion around online video.

Here are just a few of the companies in the online video space in the NYC area. I certainly forgot a bunch, so please leave them in the comments.

• Magnify.net – providing video upload,  encoding,  storage,  delivery, and rev share mainly for video clips (CN Coverage)
• Blip.tv – a leader in episodic content (CN Coverage)
• 5min – moving offices to NYC next month – knowledge sharing (CN Coverage)
• Rocketboom – daily video show about anything with host Joanne Colan (CN Coverage)
• For Your Imagination – creating a variety of online-only video shows
• WallStrip – filming in NYC about stocks with host Lindsay Cambell
• Vimeo – video hoster and community creator (CN Coverage)
• ExpoTV – video reviews (CN Coverage)
• Kaltura – video collaboration (CN Coverage)
• Joost – NYC office is North American HQ – television replacement (CN Coverage)
• SavoryNY – restaurants video reviews (CN Coverage)
• WineLibraryTV – ok, he’s in Jersey but we will allow it since he lives in the city – daily wine video show

While other areas of the country and the world are creating online video, NY is where it’s at. Innovation, technology, people, community, it’s all here. And Madison Avenue and Google are here to monetize it all.

Tonight I attended what I believe is the 2nd largest NY (tech) Meetup group – the NY Video Meetup. The group continues to get larger month over month and I am guessing 200ish came out tonight. Tonight’s presenters were: HeyCosmo, Joost, 5min and blip.tv. I am assuming that the Ustream recorded show will be available later this evening.

Before I provide some comments on the demos, tonight I had the chance to meet one of the hottest video show hosts today, Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary runs a daily video show called WineLibrary.TV. I wrote about Gary on my Vimeo vs. Viddler post and Gary has been on mainstream tv (Tonight Show and Ellen) recently and his video shows continue to explode in visitors.

So many times when techies talk about video bloggers it’s always the same crowd. There are plenty of great video bloggers outside the tech market. If you plan to get into the video blogging space, check out WLTV. Gary has 50k+ viewers daily and what’s more important is that each day he has 300+ comments on his video. And what’s great is that even though Gary owns a large wine store, he never “forces” viewers to buy from him (yet I am sure they do!). Anyway it was great to meet him this evening.

And now on with the recap.

HeyCosmo

First up was HeyCosmo. The demo was pretty tough to sit through yet it worked, which means the product sells itself. The guy who presented (I didn’t catch his name) is the brother of the CEO who was unable to make it so I can’t be too negative about the presentation :). He was hilarious. HeyCosmo offers a variety of applications on a community video platform. One of the demo’d apps was a live texas holdem app. I have to say, it’s hot. Each player uses a webcam and so it’s as close to sitting at the same table as possible. They are working on Sudoko which is in development currently. I am working on getting some invites for CN readers.

Joost

David Clark, North American VP presented Joost and if you haven’t tried Joost recently, I would suggest you give them another try. The app has lots of improvements from say early summer versions. David noted that they are a small company with big ambitions and they want to create a product that people love to use. Currently they host 15,000 shows and just launched a Facebook widget. I asked about their thoughts on Hulu and David responded, “We like Hulu – and we are looking to move to live and Web down the road as well”.

The Joost advertising platform combines all of the current Inernet technologies serving approximately 1.5 minutes of video ads per hour along with other interactive ads. From a peer-to-peer standpoint, currently 70% of the bandwidth comes from p2p and 30% from their server farm.

5min

By now I am guessing most of the CN readers have seen the Israeli actor who discusses how to get VC funding – if not, I have embedded it at the end of this post. 5min is currently located in Israel but is planning to open a NY office in a month. They currently have one million unique visitors for October with 700-1000 uploaded videos per month. Their motto is “helping each other to share knowledge”. The idea is simple – you are an expert at something. You create a video about that knowledge that’s less than 5 minutes in length and upload it to 5min.

Their business model is to get “sponsored knowledge” where say Absolut would sponsor videos on how to create a great martini or LA Fitness might sponsor videos on how to lose the freshman 15. It’s an innovative revenue model.

Blip.TV

Co-founder Justin Day presented Blip.tv. Blip has really picked up steam since their partnership with Rocketboom earlier this summer. Basically Blip is for show creators who create episodic content. Not much else to say here – though Alec from For Your Imagination noted that with Blip you can “replace” a video which is something you can’t do on most of the other services.

Check out my photos on Flickr

Quick note – tonight’s NY Video Meetup is going to stream coverage of the demos live on Ustream. Check out the channel here. The presentations begin at 7pm Eastern and include: Joost, Blip.TV and 5min.com. Should be an exciting night and I bet the name Hulu will be sounded several times.

The next NY Video Meetup is on October 30th and is well worth attending. Check out our previous event coverage and below is the list of presenters. Space is limited so register quickly if you plan to attend.

1. Joost – David Clark, GM North America
2. Blip.tv – Mike Hudack, Co-founder & CEO
3. 5min.com – Ran Harnevo, Co-founder & CEO
4. HeyCosmo.com – James Im, Founder & CEO

The event is held at the For Your Imagination studios which is the same location the CenterNetworks Mixer was held at. What an all-star lineup! I am really looking forward to hearing from Joost and 5min. Looks like the 30th will be a busy day with the Future of Business Media conference all day and then this meetup all night!