Online video provider Joost has announced that it is abandoning its current consumer-based business to concentrate on providing online video solutions to businesses.
The Dutch-based online video portal launched as a video peer-to-peer service amid great fanfare two and a half years ago and even snagged Viacom as an investor, but amid lagging traffic numbers and increasing competition from Hulu.com—which is backed by Fox, NBC and ABC—changed its service to a Web-only model last year. Although the company will continue to provide its Joost.com online video service to consumers for the time being, the company will concentrate its efforts on moving to a "white label" B2B video platform, offering services to businesses seeking to repurpose their video for the Web.
As part of the company's reorganization, current CEO Mike Volpi, who was hired during the company’s switch to Web-only, is being replaced by Matt Zelesko, currently senior vice president, who will also continue to lead the engineering department. A core team in New York and London will work on the new business model and a development center in Leiden, The Netherlands will be shut down. Volpi will stay on as chairman of the board.
