Metue.com

Joost has been in the news a good amount lately. I’ve spoken on their activities, including a detailed look at their financing here.

For all the news, and all those curious to try Joost, the big roadblock has been the invitation-only nature of their current beta test. That’s still there but I can help.

Originally, invitations were allocated and limited by quota. Those who got them could only invite a few more people. Now, the restrictions are off. There’s no limit to the number of invites that can be forwarded on. That means, if you’re itching to try Joost and you need an invite, Metue can help. Send an email to info@metue.com or use my Contact Page. Be sure to put Joost in the title. I’ll forward anyone interested an invite to try their service. There is no email-farming, data-collection here, no strings — just a request that you come back and read the articles here on Metue again.

There are links for Digg, Technorati, Del.icio.us and other bookmarking agents on Metue. Feel free to use them, bookmark Metue with your browser, or come back. Also, feel free to send along your thoughts on Joost. I have no relationship with the company and am curious to see how people will receive their new offering.

It’s been an up and down week for the year old IPTV startup Joost but it’s ending on a high note; a very high note.

After several big announcements were made about content and advertising partnerships, the web was abuzz at the beginning of the month that the supposed broadcast-quality, free, peer-to-peer,  net-television service was officially going live (from beta).   Those announcements were slightly misleading (as access was dependent on invitation) but there was a spike in traffic, and interest.    Shortly thereafter, the Joost blog reported that the company’s central servers, which are located in Luxembourg, were having problems handling the demand and load. 

While Joost may be struggling to get it’s systems tuned to scale with demand, Joost released news that will likely leave the week, and the month, on a positive note no matter what happens next.  Earlier Thursday, the company announced the closing of a substantial Series A financing round.  In total, $45m was raised.

The venture round was led by Sequoia Capital and the European firm, Index Ventures (which also invested in the Joost founder’s prior company, Skype).

Though, as is the norm for private/venture transactions, little information was announced regarding valuation, it is clear  that the pre-money valuation accepted by the investors was substantial. The $45m dollar investment was characterized as buying a minority stake in the company which translates to a pre-money valuation of greater than $45m – though it’s not clear how much money was invested previously by the founders (who were flush with cash from the sale of Skype to eBay).  $45m pre-money is still  a staggering number for a year old company yet to have revenue or roll out its product in a wide release.   

Perspective on just how big a transaction this is comes with a comparison to investment in Joost’s competitor Veoh Networks.  In April 2006, Veoh a rival P2P IPTV company closed its Series B round. That transaction raised $12.5m from venture investors Shelter Capital and Spark Capital as well as Time Warner and other corporate partners. That round also resulted in two board seats going to industry heavyweights Michael Eisner (former CEO of Disney) and  Art Bilger (the former vice-chairman of Akamai and current managing partner at Shelter.).

The Joost deal is nearly 4 times the size of the Veoh investment – and it’s an A–round financing, not a Series B.   In what should be the understatement of the month,  Joost co-founder Janus Friis said “This funding represents a tremendous vote of confidence in Joost’s platform.”  Sequoia, which recently saw a tremendous return on its investment in YouTube, and hasn’t been scared to take large gambles in its transactions,  is clearly betting big on Joost.

In an indication that, like Skype, Joost’s has global plans from the start, Click to Read More

Last week IPTV company Joost announced it had signed up 32 companies including Coca-Cola, Nike, Purina, HP, Intel, Taco Bell, Lions Gate and others to advertise on their soon to be released service.  Today,  Joost announced its commercial launch.  

Though the service is proclaimed to be widely available, access is limited to people who receive an invitation from friends and affiliates (similar to what was done with Gmail, though Google called that offering a beta test).  That marketing tactic is a little risky.  On the one hand, it will allow the company some measure of controlled growth and  protect against initial traffic “bursts” that could theoretical impair their  offering.  The marketing gimcick may also create an artificial sense of exclusivity and community.  On the other hand, the tactic could alienate potential users and impair growth.

Joost, which was previously called The Venice Project (prior article can be found here), promises more than 150 channels of broadcast quality programming served on an IPTV peer to peer platform that is ad-supported.   Click to Read More

Today, Comcast announced it had reached an agreement to acquire movie-ticketing site Fandango. While the deal size was not deemed "material" relative to Comcast’s financial’s and therefore doesn’t require disclosure, it’s likely the purchase prices falls in or near the range of $165m to $180m. That price is estimated based in part on estimated fees from usage (with unique usage numbers used as reported by Comscore) and in part, relative to the multiples (relative to estimated revenue and usage) applied to eBay’s purchase of concert and sports event ticket-seller Stubhub. ( Stubhub sold for $310m earlier this year).

More specifically, the estimated price uses calculations that try to consider i. an estimated closing rate (e.g. what percentage of unique customers complete transactions versus those at the site to just browse concert ticket prices (at Stubhub) or check movie times (at Fandango); ii. recognition that Stubhub sells concert and event tickets for prices of 5x to 10x typical movie tickets and that generates substantially higher fees per transaction than the $1/ticket service fee at Fandango; and iii. that Stubhubs smaller monthly visitor number decreases their share of ad revenue and total transaction volume.

Fandango, which was founded in 2000 by a consortium of movie distributors and investors, sells tickets for more than 1,300 Theaters. Over the past year, Fandango has been fighting with Movietickets.com for the title of being the most-visited online movie-ticket seller (AOL’s Moviefone which does provide links for ticket sales has far greater usage numbers but is not included in the category). In December ‘06, Fandango had approximately 5.8m unique visitors. In February, a slightly slower month in the cyclical movie industry, Fandango had 3.8m unique visitors who generated approximately 39m page views (according to Comscore statistics).

Click to Read More

Peer to peer architectures can be a very efficient method of sharing content or copying large files across networks.  From Napster to Kazaa to Bit Torrent, their use has been well tested, and proven, for different types of downloads (legality notwithstanding).  Peer to Peer concepts also can be efficient and functional when working with content that is "time present" (e.g. Real Time Streaming as opposed to the delayed use of a file that cannot be accessed until fully downloaded). Skype proved this in the internet telephony marketplace.   

Given peer to peer architecture’s ability to work with both time present and time delayed data, it’s only a small logical leap to envisage peer to peer architecture applied to other arenas.

The previously code named “Venice Project” was recently unveiled as such an application for streaming television content.  Skype founders, Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, began the project with some of the proceeds following the sale of Skype to EBay for more than $2.5b in 2005.   

The new company, Joost (pronounced "juiced"), is set to allow consumers to watch ad-supported TV online through a downloaded software client.  The underlying architecture is reported to be based on similar peer to peer structures to those the two previously developed for Skype. 

Click to Read More