There are some who believe that all PR is good PR. “As long as they spell your name right,” is how the adage goes. I am not one of those people, and I’m betting the folks at Joost aren’t anymore, either.
While enjoying the relative anonymity of pre-launch and closed beta, Joost quietly worked out the kinks from their system, and constructive criticism was more helpful than hurtful. The small group of beta testers understood the limits of small-scale P2P applications and some of the quality issues that come with lacking scale. So Joost, of course, opens up the beta to start establishing that scale.
But with that scale of testers comes scale of exposure. And in this month’s print edition PC World, the headline was a less than flattering, “Joost Online TV Has Style, Little Substance.” Ouch. Previous PC World reviews online weren’t that much better. As a video platform, you don’t want reviews saying that your video quality needs improvement. Wasn’t quality the biggest selling point for a P2P service? Steve Bass was underwhelmed as well in his online review of Joost and other online video services. But they are justified. Here’s a screengrab that we took on March 1st, but decided not to post it then, hoping they’d work out some of the quality bugs.
With fast moving action, you’d expect some pixelation. But a slow shot of two people up close should have looked a lot better.
Yes, its beta. And we’ve been hesitant to knock them for it, but seems like other people haven’t been as patient. Maybe the Joost PR folks should dial it down a notch while they work out a few more kinks. The service has massive potential, and the advertising community is certainly on board, thanks to the signing of deals with top tier content providers. But I’d hate to see these guys continue to get the same bad rap in every review.