Struggling online video startup Joost, begun with much fanfare in 2007 by the same people behind Skype and Kazaa, is restructuring its business after discovering that it can’t survive on advertising to fund its operations.
The chief executive, Mike Volpi, has stepped down but will remain as chairman.
The London-based company said it will shift its focus from being an online video site for consumers supported by advertising — similar to Google Inc.’s YouTube. Instead, it will help businesses manage their videos on the Internet as they build brands.
Its target market will be media companies such as cable and satellite TV providers, broadcasters and video aggregators.
“In these tough economic times, it’s been increasingly challenging to operate as an independent, ad-supported online video platform,” Volpi said in a statement.
Joost was co-founded by Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, the same people behind Internet phone service Skype and the file-sharing site Kazaa. It has minority investments from Viacom Inc. and CBS Corp.
It started as a peer-to-peer sharing site but wasn’t successful, then switched to online video. But Joost has suffered from poor traffic and had trouble making money.
Joost, which also has offices in New York, is closing its Leiden office in the Netherlands. The company declined to say how many people it’s laying off.
Volpi will be replaced by Matt Zelesko, who’s currently senior vice president of engineering. Zelesko will continue to head the engineering division.
Stacey Seltzer, senior vice president of international business development and content acquisition, will run the business operations.
Review: Director Bong Joon Ho’s “Mickey 17” Starring Robert Pattinson
So you think YOUR job is bad?
Sorry if we seem to be lacking empathy here. But however crummy you think your 9-5 routine is, it'll never be as bad as Robert Pattinson's in Bong Joon Ho's "Mickey 17" — nor will any job, on Earth or any planet, approach this level of misery.
Mickey, you see, is an "Expendable," and by this we don't mean he's a cast member in yet another sequel to Sylvester Stallone's tired band of mercenaries ("Expend17ables"?). No, even worse! He's literally expendable, in that his job description requires that he die, over and over, in the worst possible ways, only to be "reprinted" once again as the next Mickey.
And from here stems the good news, besides the excellent Pattinson, whom we hope got hazard pay, about Bong's hotly anticipated follow-up to "Parasite." There's creativity to spare, and much of it surrounds the ways he finds for his lead character to expire — again and again.
The bad news, besides, well, all the death, is that much of this film devolves into narrative chaos, bloat and excess. In so many ways, the always inventive Bong just doesn't know where to stop. It hardly seems a surprise that the sci-fi novel, by Edward Ashton, he's adapting here is called "Mickey7" — Bong decided to add 10 more Mickeys.
The first act, though, is crackling. We begin with Mickey lying alone at the bottom of a crevasse, having barely survived a fall. It is the year 2058, and he's part of a colonizing expedition from Earth to a far-off planet. He's surely about to die. In fact, the outcome is so expected that his friend Timo (Steven Yeun), staring down the crevasse, asks casually: "Haven't you died yet?"
How did Mickey get here? We flash back to Earth, where Mickey and Timo ran afoul of a villainous loan... Read More