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—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Propeller: Netscape Digg Clone is LiveLook Out Digg: Mixx Public Beta Coming on TuesdayPropeller: The New Name for Netscape’s Digg CloneNBC.com Social NetworkMySpace News: The Digg Killer?RiverWired Receives $1.5 Million For Being GreenFacebook to Launch Advertising Through News Feed - WTH?

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YouTube is set to begin offering full length feature films within “30 to 90 days” according to CNET. Parent company Google is said to be discussing a deal with at least one of the major movie studios that would bring ad-supported movies to the Web’s most popular video sharing site, which recently started testing full-length TV shows as well.

As CNET points out, YouTube has had a dicey relationship with the movie studios since inception – much of their early success was based on the ability to view TV and movie clips that had been posted illegally, and Viacom sued the company for $1 billion in damages.

But, with Google’s considerable financial muscle behind it, they are now looking to make nice with the studios – largely so they can get more easily monetizable content on the site. While YouTube enjoys a considerable advantage in terms of traffic over its competitors, user-generated video has proven difficult to sell ads against, despite a number of new ad formats introduced by Google recently.

My question about full-length movies – especially those that are ad-supported –is will anyone watch? The law of large numbers says that of course a few people will, but looking at the movie selection on Hulu or Joost – which contain nothing but professionally produced TV shows and films - it’s hardly like walking into Blockbuster (think TBS, but way worse). While Hulu’s online TV selection has proved popular by quickly re-purposing timely content like the Sarah Palin-Tina Fey SNL skits, how many embeds have you come across for “Dude, Where’s My Car?”

It would seem that the studios will continue to be reluctant to offer up their best content in an ad-supported model, and instead prefer to offer their new releases online through services like Netflix, who now let you pay to watch movies on your PC. So far, the online model is evolving exactly like TV – pay for the best, new movies (premium TV channels like HBO) and get the free, older stuff on basic cable with ads (TBS).

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:YouTube Begins Streaming Full-Length Shows from CBSFancast: Comcast Launches Rival to IMDBSpout Social Network Acquiring Users for $1 EachHabbo, The MovieFour Eyed Monsters: Watch The Full Film on YouTube…100% LegalLycos Cinema Launches - YouTube For MoviesImeem Partners with Palm Pictures for Interactive Indie Film Access

We’ve received a couple of anonymous tips that DirectTV, a $24 billion satellite TV provider, may be entering the online TV wars with a new site called DirectTV Web On Demand. The site would compete with startups like Hulu, Joost, Fancast, Sling.com, etc.

We don’t know much about the service, or even if its real. An anonymous tipster says they’ve worked on the project and supplied us with the mockup screen shot above, which could quite possibly be real. On the other hand, we’ve spoken with industry insiders and they say they’ve heard nothing about the project.

The screen shot shows Heroes, which is an NBC show. The only way for Fox and NBC shows to be syndicated on the web is via a deal with Hulu. For CBS shows, they have to go through the CBS Audience Network.

That means it’s either very, very early in the development process or it doesn’t exist at all. We have an email in to DirectTV for comment.

Joost, earlier today, debuted their Flash, web-only attempt this morning. This comes hot on the tails of the news that CBS, an investor in Joost, will begin releasing full length shows on the Google-owned video sharing network.  The launch comes five days ahead of schedule, according to Gubatron this morning.

Previous to the launch, Joost was only accessible by way of a downloadable client that functioned a little like a PC based PVR, allowing mainstream content to be viewable on-demand. The project was almost universally panned by reviewers when it was announced, but truth be told, I always thought it was a good idea in theory, but lacked a great deal in its execution.

As it stands now, Joost is set to blend in with all the other competition on the web, competition that’s by no means thin and weak. As I’ve said for years, the problem with digital video is that the veg-factor just isn’t there in most systems, and for those systems where it does exist, it’s rather shoe-horned and antithetical to the rest of the user experience.

I explained the veg-factor a while back in a discussion about the state of modern DVRs:

To illustrate the veg-factor, think about the type of media consumption you do in the morning, while you’re getting the kids ready for school, or fixing breakfast in the morning while you’re getting ready for work. Morning show format news-ish programs are designed for this low-engagement, veg-factor consumption. They’re, in large part, designed to be background noise that delivers some entertainment and utility to your morning.

Likewise, in the evening, you come home from work, you switch on the TV and catch the local news or a Seinfeld re-run, and leave the TV on through Wheel of Fortune or whatever reality program du jour is on this season. Most people won’t even touch the remote until prime-time starts. That’s the veg-factor in action.

This is something Joost could have tackled, and in so doing made big inroads on tackling the living room Internet video viewing experience. Unfortunately, they created a piece of software that required far too much processing power for the average person to afford, at least in terms of what they’re willing to spend on their home entertainment unit.

At this point, with Joost fading into the scenery in terms of delivery method, their content not looking too much different from their neighbors at Netflix, Hulu and YouTube, it doesn’t look like they’ll be doing much to pull themselves into any sort of a leadership position.

The only thing that could save them at this point would be if they continue to pull in unique and noteworthy content producers from both the mainstream and the Internet. They look like they’ve been on this track recently, as just a few weeks ago they announced a content partnership with podcast giant Wizzard. They’ll need to be looking for many more partnerships like this to continue to compete with the likes of YouTube and Hulu.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Joost Partners with VH1 for Exclusive Early Broadcast of New Comedy SeriesJoost To Launch Web Version This YearJoost Invitations: 2000+ SentJoost to Stream March MadnessJoost Signs Deals with Indie Film DistributorsJoost Gets Heavy.comJoost Acquires OnTheToob for Custom Show RSS Feeds

Columbus Day gets no respect. Be honest, how many of you are actually celebrating it? That’s what I thought.

Even Google doesn’t care (or maybe Columbus Day just isn’t PC enough). The logo on Google’s homepage today is celebrating Paddington Bear’s 50th birthday instead of a drawing of the Niña, Pinta, and Santa Maria.Source:TechCrunch

Without much fanfare, Joost has finally turned on the browser version of its Web video service, as we noted it would last month. The new site is all based on Flash, and lets you watch old Bruce Lee flicks, Sci-Fi movies like The Fifth Element, and clips from Barely Political and Comedy Central.

The Flash site comes almost exactly a year after I wrote a post pointing out that Joost’s peer-to-peer software approach would not work and that it would have to switch over to Flash-based video, just like every other Web video service. People don’t want to have to launch a new piece of software to watch video on their computers. They want to watch it in their browsers (so they can quickly surf to another page when they realize how much the video they are watching sucks—or, if it doesn’t suck, quickly switch tabs when the boss walks by their desk).

It took Joost a year, but it has finally realized that the Web is where it’s at. Now all it has to do is compete with Hulu, YouTube, Veoh, DailyMotion, and the hundred other video sites out there.

Wizzard Media, one of the industry leaders when it comes to professional podcasting solutions, has announced this morning that it’s forming a content partnership with Joost in an effort to both increase circulation for their producers as well as offer the web video portal Joost a wider variety of content and programming.

When Adam talked about Joost last week, I meant to chime in at one point or another on what I thought of their new strategy (or more specifically, what I thought was wrong with their old strategy). Adam got into it a little bit in his analysis, but the specific piece that I thought was wrong with Joost’s strategy wasn’t that they followed a very contrarian model of creating a third party app which provided access to top-shelf entertainment via the Internet, but that they never followed that up with a hardware solution for their users.

The reason why there hasn’t yet been a dominant player emerge for playing Internet content yet is that despite it’s age, all the set-top boxes designed for the task are as mature as infants. Joost missed the opportunity that Roku is now trying to capitalize on in bringing quality entertainment cheaply to the livingroom via the Internet.

Now that Joost is pursuing the somewhat “safe” route of being a web video portal, they need content, and lots of it, if they intent to compete on the level of Hulu and the myriad of humor video portals in existence. Partnering with Wizzard is one way to make that happen, enlisting the star power of hits like Tiki Bar, Hilary Duff and Quincy Jones.

Similarly, finding yet another monetizable outlet for their video content will prove to be an attractive bulletpoint for new video producers shopping around for a home and representation for their projects. 

The biggest beneficiary here is obviously Joost, and as such, the question is whether this partnership strategy will end up being enough to keep them in the game.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Wizzard Media Publicly Traded on AMEXWizzard Media Joins the NavyJoost Invitations: 2000+ SentJoost Gets Heavy.comJoost Acquires OnTheToob for Custom Show RSS FeedsJoost Invites UpdateJoost API, Joost Widgets!

So what happens when Joost ditches the download, goes all browser and launches a social network around their content?

Hulu can do that. No problem.

Tonight, via a 1 am press release, Hulu launches: show recommendations, user discussion forums for programs and specific episodes, enhanced search and better queue management. They also launched seventeen topical channels, including Anime, Fashion and Beauty, Food and Leisure, Home and Garden, Comedy, Music, Video Games, etc. The company say they now have nearly 900 TV and film titles from over 100 content providers.

And while I still think Joost’s Hot/LOL/Puke/WOW/WTF call out feature is just awesome, Hulu has the Daily Show. So they win.

As expected, Joost has rolled out its web-based version, answering one of the Web TV service’s biggest criticisms: it was previously only available as a downloadable client. While some of the features are pretty good – albeit increasingly standard for any Web video offering – they are poorly executed from a user experience perspective.

Additionally, the biggest problem with Joost remains the content catalog, which offers very little in the way of video that most people would want to watch compared to what’s offered on alternatives like Hulu, Fancast, and of course YouTube.

While you can now watch Joost shows via the Web, unlike competing services, you need to register for an account in order to do so. Then, you need to download a plugin, although Joost notes in a blog post that it will move to all Flash next month, hence eliminating the need for the plugin. Strike two.

who wants to do this?

From there, the experience is decent, and Joost has added a number of other features to make its service more compelling. For one, it’s better organized, as they’ve separated out shows, music, and film. Additionally, each Joost user now has an activity stream, so you can see what shows they’ve been watching if you use the site’s social features. While this is a cool feature, it requires you to actively participate in Joost, versus a service like Hulu that broadcasts viewing activities to the news feed on Facebook – aka, where all of your friends actually are.

So in short, what Joost is now offering requires a plugin, requires registration, and requires participation in yet another social network to get the most out of it. Considering the content catalog isn’t up to par with that of its competitors, Joost maintains very limited appeal with this release. Of course, if they are able to live stream all of the NCAA March Madness games again this year, I could change my mind

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Joost To Launch Web Version This YearJoost API, Joost Widgets!Joost Beta Version 1.0 Now LiveJoost Invitations: 2000+ SentJoost Gets Heavy.comLivestation: Microsoft Attacks JoostJoost Acquires OnTheToob for Custom Show RSS Feeds

There are lots of new community features in the new Joost, which we outlined in our previous post. Joost isn’t just moving to a browser format. They’re also creating a video based social network complete with Facebook-style activity streams that shows you friends what content you are watching, commenting on and “shouting.” See the video below:

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.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Joost API, Joost Widgets!Joost To Launch Web Version This YearJoost to Stream March MadnessJoost Invitations: 2000+ SentJoost Gets Heavy.comJoost Acquires OnTheToob for Custom Show RSS FeedsJoost Invites Update