All Things Digital

Well, here’s a good reason not to write off Joost quite yet: When the London-based company officially debuts its new Web-based service in mid-October, it will have some pretty hot content with its half-dozen seasons of the former NBC hit, “Friends.”

Also, there will finally be no more irksome plug-ins.

In other words, anyone with an Internet connection can watch streaming television shows and movies on Joost, with advertising embedded in various forms.

There will also be social-networking elements–you can see what your friends watch and form groups, make comments with cool tools and the rest of that sort of thing.

While all this is not going to make up for the lost time the online video service has wasted with its annoying P2P-based desktop client download, going to a Web-based, all-Flash service with more robust content is certainly the right way to stop rival service Hulu from continuing to clean Joost’s clock.

Joost was first out of the gate last year with a giant slug of funding, fancy founders (Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström, who were also founders of Web phenoms Skype and Kazaa) and blue-chip investors (Sequoia Capital, Index Ventures, as well as CBS, Viacom and wealthy Hong Kong investor Li Ka-shing).

In any case, Hulu quickly grabbed the lead in terms of press praise (I ate my words even!), ease-of-use and, most importantly, user numbers.

In the most recent stats, for example, Hulu had more than 100 million monthly video streams and 3.3 million unique monthly visitors. (But since Joost has just soft-launched its new Web-only service, it’s hard to make comparisons just yet, although the competition is now clearly afoot!)

And, although it has been written off by some, I do not think it is too late for Joost.

First, it is still early in the premium online video game.

Second, success will depend on having increasing amounts of quality content. And Joost–with CBS, Warner Bros., Sony and other unusual content like anime–certainly can keep up with Hulu’s programs from its partner parents, News Corp. (News Corp. is the owner of Dow Jones and this Web site) and NBC Universal.

Lastly, despite decent consumer uptake, the business is still in its nascent popcorn-stand stage of revenue and profit generation.

And while spending too much money and having too many employees did not help Joost, it seems as though CEO Mike Volpi has finally gotten control of the start-up beast.

Thus, while in London this week, I stopped in at the offices of Joost (near the famed King’s Cross train station, where, of course–to no avail–I tried to make it through the wall at Platform 9 3/4!) to chat with Volpi about all the changes at the much-hyped company.

Here’s a longish video, in which the always-well-turned-out former Cisco exec talks about all that and more:

BoomTown has decided to reinstate our practice of showcasing excellent online videos that we started posting during the writers’ strike.

Our premise has been simple: That online video in both short and long form is the future and its development is important to pay attention to.

As a huge fan of the now-defunct “The West Wing” television series, I noticed the freaky similarities between the out-of-nowhere Democratic presidential campaign of the fictional Congressman Matt Santos (played by Jimmy Smits) and the real-life Barack Obama.

That included a maverick Western senator, played by Alan Alda, who was Santos’s opponent and whom the right wing distrusted a la Sen. John McCain.

As it turns out from this great video from SlateV, the writers of the NBC hit used Obama as a template for their creation and now that template seems to be following their plot.

Here’s the video:

5. Because his World Wide Pants production company took only two weeks to bang out a separate agreement with writers to go back to work at his “Late Show” on CBS from their strike after saying they would try to make a deal.

4. Because he will get the best guests now, because actors would rather forgo Botox than walk across picket lines over at places like NBC’s “Tonight Show” and “Late Night” to flack their latest movie, TV show or whatever.

3. Because his show will be funnier than competitors, who are also resuming production with their writers still on strike, because writers are funny and nonwriters are, um, not.

2. Because this might prove to be a small return to sensibility between the two sides in the fight–writers and studios–both of whom are not negotiating at all as much as conducting what is now a pretty senseless PR fight in which everyone is a loser and no one will win.

1. Because he named his production company World Wide Pants.

Why does the idea of a marriage between Hollywood writers and VCs make me slightly queasy?

But that’s just the feeling I got when I read the always sharp Joseph Menn of the Los Angeles Times, who penned an interesting piece earlier this week about writers in Hollywood turning to venture capitalists as the strike drags on.

Wrote Menn: “At least seven groups, composed of members of the striking Writers Guild of America, are planning to form Internet-based businesses that, if successful, could create an alternative economic model to the one at the heart of the walkout, now in its seventh week.”

That includes meetings with Silicon Valley VCs like Jim Breyer of Accel Partners, whose investment in Facebook gives it insight into the creation of new audiences.

The hope for the–let’s just say it, shall we–unnatural pairing of tech VCs and Hollywood folks?

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Doug Morris is still a very, very grumpy man about the digital arena.

We did not think it could get worse than NBC honcho Jeff Zucker (pictured here), who demanded a vig for every iPod sold because “Apple sold millions of dollars worth of hardware off the back of our content and made a lot of money.”

And then came former Disney pooh-bah Michael Eisner, who blamed the writers’ strike on Apple head Steve Jobs, because he was ruining the entertainment business with that darn iPod.

“[Movie and television studios] make deals with Steve Jobs, who takes them to the cleaners. They make all these kinds of things, and who’s making money? Apple! They should get a piece of Apple,” said Eisner. “If I was a union, I’d be striking up wherever he is.”

And now comes Morris, who heads up the Universal Music Group and who was interviewed by Seth Mnookin of Wired, trying again to skewer Jobs.

Of course, he ends up poking his own petard. From his private dining room (I kid you not) at the company HQ, the 68-year-old veteran music exec talked about plans to take aim at Apple’s popular music player and service, blamed college students for the music industry’s troubles and generally sounded like a woefully out-of-touch exec.

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In my post–OK, diatribe–yesterday about Facebook and the dangers of it getting so much of the wrong kind of media attention, I neglected to also mention an interview its ubiquitous founder, Mark Zuckerberg, did with the “Today” show’s Meredith Vieira in mid-June.

Since NBC will not let me embed it and it has not hurtled over to YouTube yet, here’s a link to the short chat, in which Zuckerberg did acquit himself well and Vieira not so much (did she have to resort to the what-will-those-crazy-kids-think-of-next attitude and can she really be that perplexed by what the social-networking site might offer someone over 25 years old?).

Still, it is more of the same kind of fluff that needs to be replaced by a rigorous look at the company’s business strengths.

In that vein, the always entertaining Owen Thomas, Valleywag’s newest, I guess, um, Wag, floated an interesting notion in this post that Jim Breyer (pictured here, with his doppelgänger Tony Soprano) of Accel Partners–the big venture backer of Facebook–might use his inside track to measure the popularity of third-party application developers now proliferating on Facebook.

And then, in a move that would make Ma Soprano proud, Breyer would muscle the winners into accepting his investment dollars on his terms.

Thomas also speculates–with no actual proof, although I was riveted by the story line–that Breyer would unleash the specter of uncooperative apps makers getting quashed by Facebook, if they did not acquiesce to his nefarious demands.

Even though I have known Breyer a long time and it is my definitive impression that my 5-year-old son could handily best the doe-eyed VC in a fair fight, it’s apparently always the quiet ones you have to watch out for.

So yesterday in a very short post, I said the $1 billion valuation that NBC Universal and News Corp. were reportedly putting on its online video joint venture was, shall we say, premature.

Here’s why: No users, no track record and no revelations about what it is actually going to look like. Also no firm launch date either, it now seems.

And did I mention no name?

Well, at least as of yesterday, the No-no-no-no-no company had a new CEO–former Amazon executive Jason Kilar (right).

The 36-year-old left the online retailer last year, after almost a decade at the Seattle-based company. While there, he had a lot of different jobs, including heading up Amazon’s foray into the video and DVD businesses. Before Amazon, he worked for a short time at Walt Disney.

He’ll need all the digital and Hollywood mojo he has to get this project flying, I suspect, given that it is an attempt to get two traditional media companies–neither of which is exactly a shrinking violet–to cooperate to try to catch up in the race to distribute video on the Web.

While No-Name is often called a YouTube-killer (and good luck with that, given that the powerhouse MySpace can hardly keep up), that’s not really its aim nor should it be.

The company is probably more like Joost, except without the closed-system approach that effort is using, to find the best ways to put their professional television and film content across the Internet. As I understand it, there will be no new original or user-generated content at first.

As one smart online exec with knowledge of the venture told me, it is much more about compiling a distribution network rather than creating a destination site, which is a good idea, because there are very few of those that succeed.

Since few big Hollywood companies want to rely on YouTube and its owner Google to get their fare out there and reap the ad dollars hoped, it is imperative that they find as many ways as possible to make their content available digitally.

According to News Corp.’s COO Peter Chernin and NBCU CEO Jeff Zucker, the project has 30 employees in new offices in Santa Monica, Calif., and a dozen charter advertisers.

Some possibly worrisome news: It might or might not launch in September, as some had suggested.

“We’ll launch when we’re prepared to launch with a world-class product,” said Chernin on a conference call yesterday.

At least, he didn’t say no.

Please see this disclosure related to me and YouTube (which is owned by Google).

In this post on his NewTeeVee site, Om Malik said organizers of the still-in-the-planning-stages joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp. are making the rounds, trying to raise $100 million for the online video service designed to counter the growing power of YouTube.

That puts the valuation of the still-unnamed project at $1 billion.

Is it worth that much?

Hmm. Let me think. Hmm.

No.

It’s probably no surprise that Joost nabbed a giant $45 million in funding yesterday, given it has positioned itself as Hollywood’s best hope for resurgence on the Web.

Now, I wonder, what the much-touted online video service–launched in beta last week–is going to do with that cash? Heavy-duty marketing, for sure, along with (I hope) making sure the service works easily for the millions of nontechie users it must aim to attract to be successful. Joost was created by Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström, who are also founders of Web phenoms Skype and Kazaa.

According to a story in the Financial Times, Joost got the big slug of cash for a small minority stake from an unusual mix of investors, including Silicon Valley’s famed Sequoia Capital (backers of Yahoo, YouTube and, of course, Google) and early Skype funder Index Ventures, as well as CBS, Viacom and the wealthy Hong Kong investor Li Ka-shing. (Here is the press release.)

It is a big deal that CBS and Viacom are involved in both the funding and in handing over programming to Joost. It is pushing its free, ad-supported professional programming over the currently popular short-form user-generated content that is now all the rage, spurred by the popularity of Google-owned YouTube.

That trend has given major media and entertainment companies the fits, since it feels as if they are getting pecked to death by these online video-service interlopers and also a myriad of Web-based entertainment and social-networking sites like MySpace that are sucking away young people’s attention.

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Beth Comstock, who is president of NBC Universal Integrated Media, has been one of the company’s fastest rising executives. So it was good to hear that she appeared to have completed the journey of becoming a true digital believer when she was interviewed today onstage in front of a Silicon Valley audience at the Stanford Accel event hosted by Media X called “The Future of Advertising in Digital Media: New Business Models for Multimedia Content.”

She said the surge of Web video had been a “big learning curve for all of us,” adding that “there are defined segments of the market, and people are gravitating toward different platforms and using video in different ways.” Pointing to the NBC hit television show “Heroes,” she said its producers now had to consider all the digital implications along with the plot twists. So everyone now has to ask themselves, said Comstock, “How do I think of ‘Heroes’ in all these dimensions?”

But it did not take too long for the rubber band to recoil with a snap. Comstock noted that “the reality is [that] television is a very effective medium,” she said. “That is something that marketers want to pay for.” It is likely Comstock hopes that will be true in mid-May, when the television networks and advertisers meet in New York for the annual upfronts. That’s where the networks show off their new fall shows (while wining and dining media buyers), hoping to garner promises of billions of dollars in advertising spending. This year, though, many predict that increased Internet spending might finally sully the party. And then the cheerleader might really need some saving.