Joost is dead, long live... no, Joost is pretty much dead

One upon a time, Joost was supposed to be the future of online video. The project was founded by the makers of Skype as a way to deliver high quality video over a peer to peer network using a standalone application because, let's face it, web browsers weren't really made for video.

But over the past few years, YouTube has continued to grow in popularity, and a little site called Hulu came along and showed that people were pretty gosh darned happy to watch full length TV episodes in a browser if they could access the content they wanted.

Eventually Joost gave up on the standalone media browser idea and relaunched as a web-based video portal. The only problem is that while Joost had a handful of videos you might want to watch, it's content library always paled in comparison to Hulu and other sites.

Today Joost announced a plan to relaunch as a white-label video provider. In other words, Joost will offer up its technology to other companies looking for a way to other companies looking to start their own video portals.

Joost's web portal will continue to exist... for now. But the company is reducing its staff, closing offices, and I'd be shocked if Joost signs any new content deals anytime soon. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to see some of the existing premium partners start to disappear from the site.

Tags: joost, white-label