Skype Founders to Focus on Joost
Skype Founders to Focus on Joost
October 4, 2007: The co-founders of Skype, Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis have stepped down from their executive positions at Skype, and are tipped to focus more intensively on Joost.
Zennström and Friis are somewhat of an internet phenomenon, having originally created the infamous music and file sharing program, KaZaa and later internet telephone company Skype. The duo sold KaZaa to shaman networks and then later sold Skype to Ebay for $US 2.2 Billion in 2005 but opted to stay on as executive directors at Skype. The pair have now announced that they are stepping down from Skype to focus more intensively on Joost.
Skype allows users to make telephone calls via their computers to other Skype users free of charge. Skype can also be used to make calls to landlines, often at much cheaper rates then if they were made through a regular telephone service.
“Well, we said it at the time of the acquisition in 2005 - eBay overpaid for Skype and we think this confirms it. Although revenues have been flowing from Skype, the growth has been slowing and the service is clearly not generating anything like the business boost that eBay had expected. Skype is also arguably no longer the attraction to its founders that it once was - they now want to pay more attention to Joost.” Said Mark Main, senior analyst at Ovum.
Joost is another ‘peer to peer’ or person to person application that spreads the network load amongst all the users, instead of only just on a central server. Joost is a way of watching mainstream television programs and movies online through a peer to peer network. The content would be completely licensed and incorporates interactive features such as live chat rooms and social networking features which would allow for a more involved experience while watching content.
Whilst it may initially seem that these kind of features wouldn’t be worth having, it’s basically incorporating the idea of watching television or movies with friends and family, only you could do it online. Being in a chatroom with all of the other people watching the same television program may not be for some people, but having access to a full host of international channels without having to pay for cable or satellite television may be more exciting.