Viacom Cuts Content Deal With Joost

Posted on February 20, 2007

There is a lot of discussion about Viacom's content licensing deal with Joost on Techmeme. The deal does not mean YouTube will never be able to land a content deal with Viacom. Ars Technica explains the two big differences between YouTube and Joost. Joost is more focused on longer content and Joost does not allow videos to be uploaded by users like YouTube does.

Truth be told, Joost is nothing like YouTube. Joost is all about TV-length programming, although it can show shorter clips and even feature-length films. Most importantly, Joost is focused on commercial video content, not the user creations that have made YouTube so popular. To wit, you cannot upload content to Joost, making it a "secure" distribution medium in the eyes of many in the entertainment industry. Joost's founders don't have to deal with promises of filtering software or any of the other problems that stem from allowing anyone to "broadcast yourself (or someone else's content)." In this way, the two services are quite different.

Joost is much more about watching TV online while YouTube is focused on building an economy around video clips and short video content. Viacom's plans to make video content embeddable on blogs and websites from its own websites is a much bigger snub to YouTube than the Viacom-Joost deal.