Now Everyone Can Get Joost

Today Joost, the internet television service and the brain-child of
the Skype founders, is launching to the public after months of beta
testing. Users can download professionally produced videos onto their
computers worldwide.

Joost is hoping that word of mouth marketing will help boost their
user base and according to The Financial Times Tech Blog, Mike Volpi,
chief executive of the company said that about 10% of the 1.5 million
registered users were active during beta testing. Volpi told FT.com
that the company is focused on more content deals rather than a larger
ad campaign. The company is currently in talks with Paramount, CBS and
Viacom.

The video download site has also announced that it has opened to
developers, allowing outside developers to put widgets on top of the
video player. These features will give Joost's community social
networking features to keep them engaged and returning to the site
more often than they traditionally would.

User generated content is also a new category being offered by Joost.
Volpi also spoke about the potential to offer smaller scale,
professionally produced content, "When producers hear about Joost,
they say, 'that's great, I have three ideas I want to pursue for about
$50,000 each, and if I did that can I put it on Joost?' I think n the
end that is going to be a very interesting sweet spot for us."