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Written on 30th June 2009
0 COMMENTS 
Martin Bryant, Co-founder, Social Media Café Manchester
Troubled online video startup Joost has announced a major restructure. Proving just how hard it is to succeed in their market, the company will switch focus from being an ad-funded video platform to a white label solution for businesses.
In a blog post today CEO Mike Volpi announced that although the existing video platform would continue to operate, the company’s primary offering would be backend solutions for media companies wanting to show video on the web. Many staff are being laid off as part of the move, with Volpi himself stepping down as CEO but remaining at the company as Chair of the Board.
Joost has suffered huge challenges in its short life. A year after launching in a blaze of hype in 2007, they switched from using a peer-to-peer based desktop app to a Flash video based solution. The convenience of browser-based viewing had been underestimated by Joost’s management. (more…)
Written on 29th September 2008
7 COMMENTS
Guest blogger, sharing views on The Next Web
Written by Luca Fracassi
Italy is certainly not the first country you think of when it comes to web technologies. This post will not argue the contrary, but it will try to explain a little bit about the Italian web scene.
That’s so six years ago
Internet usage in Italy is extremely low compared to most other developed economies. The penetration rate was only 36 percent in 2007. The Italians that use the web still see it mainly as a communication/information tool. The most visited websites include news sites and blogs.
E-commerce is rising, but still far from the average. In 2007 e-commerce represented 0.49% of retail sales, while this figure is around 6% in the UK, the top performer in Europe. Take a look at the Internet Book Shop to see a clear example of how young this market still is. IBS is the top e-commerce site in Italy with over 1.3 million uniques per month in 2007 and with €30 million turnover. The site’s graphics and layout are horrible by current standards, but there’s a simple explanation for this: the site hasn’t changed in the past 6 years! For a country known for its design and style this is outrageous, we can and should do better than this.
Computer lessons on the chalkboard
There are several reasons for the slow growth of the web in Italy, but I can certainly mention some major ones:
- Slow deployment of broadband
Only 8.7 million families (37% of the total) have an ADSL connection in 2008!
- Low IT-alphabetization
I hope things have improved since I was young (I am only 30), but I doubt it. I went through five years of high school and never had a computer lesson or even saw a computer. The first computer lesson I had was at University (1998) and the teacher was explaining us how a PC worked (cpu, hard-disk, memory, etc), all on the chalkboard!
- Culture & habits
Italians still spend a lot of time watching television, though the younger generations are more aligned to the European/western standards and are spending more and more time online. Generally speaking Italian society is still very much run by very “wise” people and that means there’s a huge disconnection between the new technologies and the ruling class. This can also be seen by the low investments made by companies in the web industry.
There are some exceptions
Though they’re not brilliant, the Italian web scene has some interesting cases. I will mention a few good ones.
Beppegrillo.it
Beppegrillo.it is probably the best known Italian blog (ranking #20 on Technorati). This comedian has understood the power of the web and is fully exploiting it. Through his blog he managed to gather 50,000 people in a square for a demonstration last year. Not bad…
Beppegrillo.it demonstration
Babelgum
A free Internet TV platform supported by advertising, Babelgum offers professionally produced programming on-demand. Babelgum is a creation of Silvio Scaglia, former founder and CEO of FASTWEB a major italian cable television-internet provider.
Crosscast-system.com
This is another video startup that aims at competing with the likes of Joost. A good review with screenshots can be found at WebTvWire. Not sure what they will manage to do in the long run, but seems very promising…
Big potential
The Italian market is largely underdeveloped which, in my opinion, leads to a simple conclusion: huge opportunities. Sooner or later, the Italian market will catch up with the rest of the world and, given the population (60 million people), it has a big potential.
Personally, I believe that the web can bring bring a positive disruptive change to the Italian market, a market that is too often dominated by “dodgy” practices. There’s still time to enter this market, you just need to get the ingredients right. For example: get some decent graphics and you will already have a competitive advantage!
If you know some interesting Italian startups. just drop me a line. It’s time to show internationally what the Italian web scene can produce…
Written on 21st July 2008
2 COMMENTS
Joop Dorresteijn, East Asia correspondent
Good news for alternative movie fanatics out there, Raindance Festival has launched raindance.tv earlier this year and reports that they secured about € 600.000 ($1 million) to accelerate their online operations. The website also signed distribution deals with 8 partners to facilitate the movies to the public.
For those in the blue: Raindance is a well known and (16-year) old film festival for movie outsiders, indies and movie rejects. The festival has hosted an impressive list of guests and filmmakers, including: Christopher Nolan (Memento, Batman Begins), Shane Meadows (Dead Man’s Shoes, This Is England), Ken Loach (Kes, Ae Fond Kiss), Marky Ramone (The Ramones), Iggy Pop, Andrea Arnold (Red Road), Quentin Tarantino, and Lou Reed.
10 months after launch, Raindance.tv is filled with indie short and features films. The low-budget film distributor signed with partners to provide the content, including Daily Motion, Vuze and Joost to provide the content. The video platform license and pay filmmakers royalties from any revenues earned, be it through advertising or pay per view. Elliot Grove, founder of the Raindance Film Festival and the British Independent Film Awards, will act as a senior consultant to the company.
Written on 9th January 2008
8 COMMENTS
Guest blogger, sharing views on The Next Web
Michael Volpi must either have a great plan for innovation this year, or he must be feeling like the walls are closing in.
Joost started the race for Internet TV way before everyone else with a product unlike any other, with the promise of unprecedented flexibility on targeted ads so the advertisers would get the best bang for their buck.
However it seems like way too many people have jumped on the Internet TV space, with many different and innovative approaches.
During the last weeks, I’ve started noticing how some big players are merging with Hulu.com’s embeddable content and how some of them are trying to get into your living room.
Last year I told David Clark, North American VP of Joost at the NY Video Meetup that many people have said that Joost should create a Set-Top Box device, or to partner up with a TV manufacturer and get Joost on the TV, but probably one of the things they’ve not thought about is to port Joost into an Xbox Live downloadable application and make a deal with Microsoft. Of course this was in front of hundreds of people and he just gave me a politically correct answer and went on.
If I could have a chance to talk to Michael Volpi, I’d suggest a couple of crazy ideas, which have been implemented during the past week by no other than Microsoft, Veoh.com, and the Big G. (more…)
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