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.
🙂 I’m one of these people that I’ll give something a try if someone I appreciate has an extreme opinion about it (“The best thing since sliced bread” / “It stinks”)
Most of the time, I don’t like the good things, sometimes I find a raw gem in the mud…
I didn’t even think about trying it out until John said it stank…
🙂 I’m one of these people that I’ll give something a try if someone I appreciate has an extreme opinion about it. (“The best thing since sliced bread” / “It stinks”)
Most of the time, I don’t like the good things, sometimes I find a raw gem in the mud…
I didn’t even think about trying it out until John said it stank…
John, Someone sent your column my way. This was my answer over in my neck of the woods:
Hint: If John’s talking about Joost in his enimitable fashion, than my barometer was right. It’s an important development and he knows it. And I did talk about the targeted commercials, too. It’;s an important part of personal TV and watching a few commercials I might be interested in sure beats paying for programming. But my enthusiasm is based on the fact that I think peer to peer is seriously underutilized, majorly powerful and has a bad rap undeservedly.
It’s a Joost Joust
Bah. John’s being John. Let him be. My impression is he’s usually right on…for me. You may feel differently.
Wow John, I couldn’t dissagree more. While the early adopters may have found little to no good programing. Joost just signed a deal with viacom. This is content at its best.
“Joost is still a work in progress, and so far, I’m impressed. ”
“I’m a beta tester also. John the content will come. Did you notice how awesome it looks full season and its all screaming. ”
“Dude, I love joost. I disagree with you, john. Right now, it is about the technology…. the word BETA ring a bell? They are still trying to work out the kinks. ”
Oh please. Nothing that does the kind of crap mentioned here will ever be permitted on MY computer. The Kazaa people are scumbags. They have a long and established record of injecting spyware onto your computer. A classic conjunction of weasels: Viacom and Joost. Conspiring to screw up your computer worse than ever!
Stop sucking up to the Man, you bunch of lickspittle weenies.
Joost is BS. Youtube rules. I don’t have the attention span to watch anything for more than 1 minute on the computer.
I read your article on Market Watch with a smile on my face. Does anyone in corporate America take what you say seriously? I mean, when you talk to “old people”, do they listen to you or do they walk away in condemnation?
Lets insert Napster for YouTube and waste our time some more on telling morons that they are moronic. I think that the real problem is that the people trying to convince the world of the new world coming into existence at the hands of these and other similar technologies are genuinely good people, and the people that are of the opposing view point are quite literally not.
Now, if we could devise a way to change people’s psychologies and predestined socio-economic natures without actually forcing our will on them by throwing planes into buildings, coordinating the same, or suing them for trading digital music files from peer to peer… perhaps we could be good people and change the way our marketplace functions.
But alas, have you been following the bottom lines of these companies being traded on Wall Street? Why would change be good? I mean, capitalist communism, thats the future right? China is on to something, right?
Total control and free market economics… just how did those two theories get in bed together?
All I know is my child was born a slave… they slapped a social security number on him, told him he was a “citizen” (woohoo) and whalah… I pledge allegance to the flag…
The Civil War should make a comeback… does anyone even remember what the leaders of the Confederate army were fighting for? Did General Lee want slaves? Ya think?
Enslavement —– Employment… whats the real difference at the macro economic level? Its all about efficiency. It costs less to have people find there own beds, homes, clothes, and food than to do it for them as your property… even if you have to pay minimum wage.
How are we gonna get this generation to expect to be treated like free markets when they were sold into bondage way before they were even given life? The managers of Viacom don’t even know they are slaves.
Until we own our own identities as sovereign living socio-economic entities, we can not hope to structure our marketplace in a manner that would make sense of digital technology in an intelligent and wise manner.
Our thoughts, our ideas, the work that emanates from the murmuring of our minds… these are natural resources. More powerful than fossil fuels, they are the property of us all. But capitalism circa 2007 is not equipped to deal with them in the format they truly exist. So we must war.
But who is gonna do that?
Shiznit…lets just write about it.
http://udpo.blogspot.com/
NZN — And that’s what I do. In fact I’ve made a small fortune telling morons that they are morons. Why stop now?
That said, I would rather see sanity and progress if given a choice.
Funny note, thanks!
Great article on Viacom John! Now it all comes together. Yvette Alberdingkthijm, executive vice president, content strategy and acquisition for Joost is the former MTV International General Counsel. No wonder she is quoted as saying “Viacom’s properties are perfectly suited to Joost. We’re thrilled to be a part of Viacom’s digital strategy.”
John:
Why are you always so whiny? I haven’t seen you come up with a great new idea, nor even a ‘non-whiny’ new format for your posts, in a long, long time.
Being a fellow beta-tester for Joost, I’m not that impressed either. But rather than bag on them for trying something a little different than the ever smaller and smaller pack of giant media companies, why don’t you just help your readers understand the issues a little better. At worst, you would be informative.
E
If anyone could spare an invite, I’d forever be grateful and I’ll pay it forward.
revpomp@gmail.com
hey john, if you dont want your account with joost, i’ll be glad to take it off your hand 🙂
Got my invite this morning and loaded Joost immediately. I hadn’t read Dvorak’s comments, but after about five minutes with Joost I was Googling “Joost sucks”. Couldn’t agree more.
It’s interesting that in this post you say it is all about the content, but then in your MarketWatch article you say that there is no intrinsic value to a 3 minute clip of Daily Show on YouTube.
Aren’t those two statements contradictory to each other?
HI,
I would like to test joost beta.
Please send me the invitation to mail mail id :
msudheer@gmail.com
Thanks
sudheer
It definitely sounds unreasonable that you would get hung up on inadequate content for a beta software. I would love to test the beta version. If anyone can forward me an invite to fkoro@hotmail.com I’d appreciate it.
Thanks.
Just got my invite today – still no content…
25 channels and nothing’s on.
Some good clips from BBC top gear program – altough
there is so much more of these on utube…
Totally agree with you John,
in order for this sucker to succeed it should have 5 live channels 24 hours a day –
Right now IT SUCKS big time.
I would like to test joost beta.
Please send me the invitation to mail mail id :
abespap@gmail.com
Thanks
esat
Haha! Great post. Guess Conan got it right then.
http://sniptools.com/musings/conan-calls-a-spade-a-spade
“It is called television!” 🙂
Ive been watching joost for about a week, i think its amazing, this technology is eventually going to destroy cable television as we know it. I have no problem finding a cool show to watch on this program (discovery, movies, comedy central) and watching a short Advertisement once in an hour is really something that doesn’t bother me. I have my computer sending s-video to my tv and the quality is better than my cable gives me. The sound is also great. watching it on my tv i don’t even notice that its streaming off of the internet.
i got invites and got signed up but forgot my username and password so i dont know if it sucks
I have tried it for two days and I have mixed feelings. Sometimes the quality is not all that great. Others times it is pretty good. The biggest problems I have had with it are bugs and issues that MUST be resolved if Joost is to actually fly
1. It crashes some cheap routers … mine crashes like clockwork at about 1 hour. I am not the only one with this problem and it is a BIG one that will need to be resolved. Telling folks they need a new router to use Joost isn’t going to fly.
2. The ad placement right now is terrible and I have no clue how these ads are targeted. I get the same ones on every channel I watch.
That said I think with tweaks and good content they can pull it off. Its just a wait and see game for consumers. Personally, I am rooting for them.
I prefer definitively this innovative and interactive way to watch TV even it’s an imperfect beta version.
It’s months later. Joost STILL sucks! Little choice of content, invasive ads (not just ad supported, but invasive ads). I’d rather pay iTunes. I’d pay Joost too, if they get content. So far there’s still nothing worth watching.
I can’t recall the last time something sucked this hard. Lemme see: ridiculous resource hog, slow, crap interface, slow, buggy, slow, crap interface, slow, buggy, etc. Holy crap, it’s crap. It’s really, really, really crap. And after that, it’s crap some more. Everything about Joost screams “morons!” I don’t get it. These are the people who brought us Napster AND Skype? WTF? Did they invest all of their money in crack? Here, Joost, a few clues for you:
1. Enough of the resource hunger.
2. Enough of the crap interfece.
3. It’s 2007. Hello? My graphics card outputs video to my TV and I would like to USE it for watching video.
4. Why is everything so hard to do with Joost?
5. While you’re at it, if you’re gonna make me work so damn hard, could I have some content I am actually gonna watch? Thanks a bunch. You guys are heroes!
Hate to tell you Folk sbut Jon is a total hypocrite and Cranky Geeks is Now On Joost .
I Invited John to Joost told him that is was still a closed beta and there wasnt much content and he still wrote this piece (With my full name in the original article I asked him to remove ) .
Well its very amusing to see John on Joost …..wonder if he will ever mention this article …..
Joost sucks. I just googled Joost sucks and this page was at the top of the list. They need to get their act together or just file for bankruptcy. Stop teasing us… and die.