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September 5th, 2008 at 11:36 am

Joost – one of last year’s hottest startups and so far one of this year’s biggest flops – is pulling a 180 in strategy. According to Om Malik, the video service will kill off its desktop client and replace it with a Web version that will utilize a “small plugin that would embed itself in the browser and allow you to grab files using the P2P technologies”

Although the required download was long one of the biggest criticisms against Joost, the company now faces another big challenge: content. While Joost has scored a number of deals with the likes of CBS and Major League Baseball, one look at the Joost homepage tells you the current state of the company’s catalog.

With all due respect to He-Man & Shera, there is no way Joost on the desktop or the webtop can compete with the likes of Hulu, which has thousands of recent episodes of hit shows like The Office, The Daily Show, and House, just to name a few. Considering Hulu is backed by News Corp and NBC Universal, it’s doubtful Joost will be able to do much to improve its catalog either, since Hulu’s huge competitive advantage is its access to content. Making things even worse, Joost’s own investor and partner CBS has many shows available on its website that are nowhere to be found on Joost.

While shifting to a Web-based product is a much needed move, it seems like too little, too late, unless the company also makes a radical shift in content strategy. At the moment, Joost – which has raised $45 million - has essentially become like a lower tier cable channel, which simply doesn’t work online because of the infinite number of alternatives.

Source:Mashable!

Dipity has released some major new features, taking online timelines to another level with the launch of Dipity 2.0. The site has added a great deal of social networking integration with services such as Digg, Twitter, Daylife, Flickr and many others. It has also added the ability to track not only what your friends are doing (ala Friendfeed), but also the topics that they are interested in. Dipity then presents all of this data in a more visually pleasing manner that’s impressive and easy to digest.

Many new points of view

There are four vastly different ways that you can view all of this information. There’s the default patent-pending Timeline view which displays the data in chronological order. There’s the flipbook which creates a dynamic photo album type of viewing experience. The List view is a traditional top to bottom list view and the Map view creates a Google Maps type of display of the information. So you can look at the same information from several different angles depending on your preference. No matter which one you choose, you’ll never look at these topics the same way again. Best of all, everything can be viewed in place without requiring you to leave the site. For example, you can view Flickr photos and YouTube videos right inside the timeline.

Seeing is believing

Here are some examples of what you can do with Dipity:

- Howard Stern uses Dipity on his website

- So does Billy Joel for his biography

- Here’s a mashup of Dipity with YouTube that they call TimeTube

- This is called Archaeologist, which is a mashup of Dipity and Digg

- Ticker is a mashup of Dipity and Flickr

When will Dipity 2.0 be ready for Prime Time?

The official word is that Dipity 2.0 will be made available to the public in late September or early October. However, because you’re special and a devoted Mashable reader, you can join Dipity 2.0 right now by taking advantage of one of the 500 invites they’ve set aside for us. Simply go to the Dipity preview site, enter the invite code ‘MashableReader’ and click register once you are prompted with a login screen.

Conclusion

Dipity can be somewhat confusing at first glance, but think of it like FriendFeed on a timeline. You can view your friends’ activities on social networks on a timeline structure instead of the regular top to bottom method. You can also create the same type of timeline views for any topic that interests you or to display all of your social networking activity such as blog posts, Flickr photos, Twitter posts and much more.

After using Dipity 2.0 for a while it all starts to make sense. Viewing data in a more graphical way makes a great deal of sense, especially in this age of information overload where we’re all getting drenched trying to drink from the firehose of social networking. Dipity 2.0 certainly provides a unique, entertaining and useful way to look at things online via what could be called a social timeline.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Fire Eagle Now Available to All. How Will Yahoo Take Advantage?