Breaking: Joost Turns to the Web for Help
GigaOm is reporting that Joost will discontinue its desktop P2P client and replace it with a small plugin that would embed itself in the browser. That plugin will reportedly provide files with the help of the company’s P2P technologies that are already in place.
Joost, which launched to considerable fanfare, has fallen off the radar as of late as the company has been plagued by a shortage of content and, well, users. And as the inertia of the online video business moves away from desktop clients and to the Web, it seems Joost has finally seen the writing on the wall and will launch an online video service of its own.
Although Joost has not confirmed the report, it is expected to make an announcement shortly. It’ll be interesting to see how it fares in an already crowded lineup of offerings headlined by Hulu, Amazon, and Fancast.
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Things Are Looking Good At Startup Schwag
It’s been a few months since we wrote about Startup Schwag, a service that sends users startup-branded tshirts and stickers every month.
You’ll either think this is lame (not target market) or so cool you’ve wet your pants (target market) and act accordingly. The first attempt at the model by Valleyschwag didn’t scale and folded. Startup Schwag isn’t relying on the companies to produce the stuff, though (that’s where Valleyschwag ran into trouble when they got too big), they do it themselves with the company’s permission.
The first mailing included a TechCrunch Tshirt, and one made its way to Lisa Brewster, who writes the blog Sophestichate. She posted the picture above to her blog a couple of days ago. Golf clap for Lisa, our new unofficial mascot. Another woman models the reddit tshirt here.
Founder Roddy Richards says the service is doing well and has 400 subscribers now paying $15 per month each.
Richards has also founded a startup called PriceAdvantage. It was rejected by Y Combinator, but Richards used the money YC gave his to apply (travel expenses) to incorporate the company and get it going. It launched December 11 and is doing well, he says.
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Return Of The Schwag
The true hard core geek/fanboy crowd loved ValleySchwag when it launched in the Spring of 2006. For $15 per month you would receive a package containing tshirts, stickers, pens and other junk that new startups pay a fortune to have created with their logo printed on it. Usually this stuff is handed out at parties and conferences, but ValleySchwag created a way for people to get it even if they didn’t, or couldn’t, attend the events.
Sadly, ValleySchwag faded away as the founders moved on to other projects. Now another service, Startup Schwag, is taking its place with a nearly identical model.
Startup Schwag was created by Roddy Richards, a web developer, and is based in Chicago. Richards says he’s going to tweak the model substantially to allow it to scale up. ValleySchwag failed, he says, because too many subscribers wanted a limited supply of schwag, and it became a real burden on startups to get enough actual stuff to fulfill that demand.
Startup Schwag won’t be looking to startups to send them stuff to pass on to subscribers. Instead, Richards says they’ll be licensing logo rights from hot startups and creating the schwag themselves, at exactly the amount to fulfill demand.
That means tech geeks who think a Digg or Twitter Tshirt is cooler than a Nike logo will have a way of getting exactly what they want. Startups will pay nothing for the stuff, although they will be expected to license their logo to Startup Schwag for free. Something tells me that PR hungry companies will be more than willing to do exactly that.
Richards say the first shipments will go out in early to mid October.
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