One of the interesting dilemmas you have on a website; is the balance between making stuff very simple and easy to use versus having a lot of new features. Its often hard to make those calls, espcially for more advance feaures that the ‘standard’ user might not care that much about. Many sites, start out really strong but end in an interesting struggle between making their exsisting userbase happy by giving them more stuff to do on the site (and then reduce chun and increase time on site) and by keeping the site nice and easy to use for new users. (increase month uniques). At Joost we have the same challange. We want to allow users to find content really easy. However, we also want to introduce users to new features that add value to their video viewing or allow them to find content they didnt know they wanted to watch. So one way we will be trying to solve that problem is by introducing new features in our advertising space. Not only can we make feaures easy to understand – we can also messure and improve our advertising units. (the video below is displayed with an campanion ad on Joost – allowing users to connect with facebook via one click…)
TV is one of the most universal social machines. Not only is it great center when hanging at home watching TV with friends or family – its also one of those things that you can always start a conversation
around. In fact almost as important as the shows themselves is talking about what might happen in next weeks episode, interacting with a show while its going on (e.g. via shouting or texting) or debating previous
episodes with friends the next day. Previously all these social aspects of video viewing has been going on in the offline world.
However, at Joost we want to give users the tools to do all the social things they do in the offline world, namely tools for finding shows your friends a watching, expressing your point of view while watching
and discussing the shows afterward. We have some of these tools already. While watching a show on Joost
you can ‘shout’ and all your friends will be notified what you view was on that certain video, you send new shows you never heard about by watching what your friends are watching and you can both comment or
create groups to host the discussion afterward.
Today is a really good day for online social tv viewing. From now on users can sign in to Joost via their Facebook account (Facebook connect). This amazing new initiative from Facebook allow users to use
all the social tv tools on Joost together with all their friends on Facebook. Think of this, like having a room packed with your best friends and a wide screen plasma TV with access to 46.000 cool music videos, great movies and entertaining films. Now just add popcorn and let the social tv experience begin.
In our first release here are some of our top level features:
- Login to Joost via you Facebook ID
- Post your comments and favorites to your friends facebook feeds
(including an embedded version of the video you were referring to.
This allow you friends to watch that video without leaving their facebook page)
- Receive notifications and updates via Facebook.
But this is of cause just the beginning, but for now, we are proud to be part of this serious step towards adding social to every day online video viewing. Thanks to Dave Morin and his team over at Facebook for
good ideas and being so easy to work with.
Hey, chances are that we have a meeting scheduled or we recently met and that made you do a quick internet search to get a bit of information about me :) Well, normally I think personal homepages are a bit vain, but again, why not make it all a bit easier for people; so here it is, my contact info, a list of some random projects I have worked on and some pictures and videos. Should you have any questions - please drop me an email..
