Viacom Picks Joost to Be New BFF
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Written By Kate Zimmermann | February 20, 2007 | Share This
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Barely two weeks after pulling over 100,000 clips from YouTube, Viacom has announced a new partnership with Joost.com. In return for content from MTV, BET, Comedy Central and some Paramount movies, Joost will give Viacom a significant portion of advertising profits (Ars Technica estimates Viacom may get a 2/3 stake in ad revenue).
Joost is the latest brainchild from the founders of Skype. Unlike other P2P digital video sites, Joost does not host user-generated content.
Viacom’s decision to opt out of YouTube could signal the imminent separation of professional and user-generated video networks. Certainly, such a divide would take care of copyright issues for content owners - but, it could also stunt growth of online video adoption. Jeff Jarvis writes,
“The wise company today will go with the flow of the public’s desires and try to figure out how to make money by helping them do what they want to do. That may sound obvious, but it’s not how media work. In the age of consumption, control was what media were about. In the age of creation, they should be about enabling…
Rather than cutting off new distributors and promoters, I say that producers should be finding the ways to take full advantage of the opportunities they present. How can you build new audience for free and grow larger than you ever could when you were limited by your own distribution and marketing? How can you enable that growing audience to recommend and share your best stuff? How can you find yourself in a larger conversation - not just in comments on your site, but in the response videos people make on YouTube and elsewhere? How can you use this new medium to find new talent and new ways to make content for less? And, yes, how can you make advertising revenue on the clips that are on YouTube and then on the countless blogs that embed its videos?”
Discussion
- Viacom Jilted YouTube for Joost, Google Crying Itself to Sleep (Gizmodo)
- Joost Gets Some Viacom Love (NewTeeVee)
- Just Joost for Viacom (Roby Hyndman)
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