Joost Sucks
A Review by John C. Dvorak

Yahoo blogger Robin Raskin can’t be serious with this review of Joost. Just listen to this analysis from Raskin: “Joost will let you do some very cool things like watch a show and rate it or chat about it.” Holy crap Batman, sign me up!! You can watch!? You can chat!?! How novel!

This fawning, nee pathetic, commentary just gets worse and totally ignores the dark side of the whole deal which is apparently individually targeted ads. How do they do that? Track you like a dog, that’s how.

So I got an invite to Joost (hard to come by) and I checked it out. Two words: It stinks. That simple fact seems to be ignored by all the reviewers.

Oh the technology looks cool enough, but so what? The only content is infomercials for last-gen rock bands with emphasis on Green Day and it’s Hitler Youth-style concerts. There is also some snide punk doing a talk show for kids “who don’t like adults telling them what to watch.” He emphasizes that point incessantly between glances at someone off camera who I assume to be his Dad. And the rest of the programming, if you can call it that, is worse.

Joost also sits in the toolbar and you’ll be doing something else when a mysterious T-Mobile commercial is suddenly heard in the background and Joost activates as a background task. How nice. Nice if you like to be annoyed that is.

These sorts of IPTV initiatives are not about technology, but about content. The founders of Joost are the guys who did Kazaa and Skype. Neither of these things were products or ideas where content was an issue. Kazaa users were trading stuff and with Skype people chat with each other. Joost is about the content not the technology something these guys and Raskin don’t seem to get. They’d better get it soon or this will Joost be a memory.

Want to get a Joost account? Pester them at www.joost.com. Good luck.