Now I can invite everyone to Joost

Now that Joost is going out of beta I got the following email. I can invite everyone to Joost. So, as always, leave a nice comment and your email address under this post! I will send you a Joost invitation as soon as I can.

Now you can invite all your friends to Joost

von: Joost Support Details ausblenden 11:30 (3½ Stunden)
an: Markus Göbel <.....@.....>
datum: 09.05.2007 11:30
betreff: Now you can invite all your friends to Joost
gesendet: von bounces.joost.com

Hello Markus,

We hope you're enjoying your Joost experience.

We'd like to share some good news and celebrate the launch of the new Joost beta - Now For Friends. This means you can now invite as many friends as you want to try out Joost.

To access your invites, log onto Joost, go to My Joost and fill in your friends' details in the Invite Friends widget box.
If you're running out of friends, you can make new ones by letting people know you've got invites. To help with this, we've made a few goodies especially for you, which you can find at http://www.joost.com/share/goodies.html.

Last but not least, we invite you to enjoy the variety of new shows we're introducing each week. This week we bring you a host of new channels from Universal Music, great science fiction like Earth Final Conflict, and Creature Comforts from Aardman Animations. We've also got swimsuit models and snowboarders, anime and animals, and much more. But that's just the beginning. Each week we'll launch new channels - making sure you can watch what you want, when you want. So stay tuned...
If you've got any questions, feel free to check out our forum http://www.joost.com/forums, and don't forget to send us feedback on what you like and things we could improve.

Enjoy, and see you on Joost!

The Joost Team

-- You are receiving this email because you are a Joost beta tester (The Venice Project). If you no longer want to be a beta tester, please send an email to support@joost.com with the subject line: "Please Remove"

We take your privacy very seriously. To read our privacy policy and see how we we use the information you give us,visit our website at http://www.joost.com/privacy.html

I got five new Joost invites

The New York Times tells that Joost will officially begin its broadcasts on next tuesday, 1st of may 2007. Maybe that's the reason why I got this email which lets me invite five more persons.

As always the five nices blog comments will get an invitation to Joost from me. Just explain why I should invite especially you!

von: Joost Support Details ausblenden 17:57 (Vor 28 Minuten)
an: Markus Göbel <......@....>
datum: 27.04.2007 17:57
betreff: You got 5 new Joost invites for your friends
gesendet von: bounces.joost.com


Hello Markus,

and thanks for recommending Joost to your friends!

As a little thank-you gift, we've given you 5 more invitations
in your "My Joost" invitation widget for you to share with them.

We also hope you enjoy the new channels. To stay tuned to
what's hot and new on Joost, you can also check out the
notice board, available from the widget menu in "My Joost."

Happy Viewing!

The Joost team

You can unsubscribe from our newsletter list by replying to
this mail with "please unsubscribe" as the subject line.

We take your privacy very seriously. To read our privacy
policy and see how we we use the information you give us,
visit our website at http://www.joost.com/privacy.html

Who wants an invitation to Joost?

Finally Joost let's me invite other people as beta testers for their service. Today I receiced this email:

Hello,

We have added new tokens to your account, so you can invite more people to participate in the Joost beta testing program.

To invite others, please go to https://www.joost.com/betatest/invitations.html and enter their email addresses. They'll be sent an invitation and a password to start participating right away.

Best regards,
The Joost team

When I entered my account I saw that I had two tokens. I directly invited a friend who had asked me before. So only one token was left. But after some time I had two tokens again, maybe because my friend had meanwhile accepted the invitation. It seems that Joost gives always two tokens to its beta testers.

I am going to verify this now by inviting an other person who asked me in the comments section of this blog. My Joost account actually says "Number of invitations you can send: 1". But maybe soon I will have two tokens again?

The person who wants a Joost invitation from me should just ask in the comment section of this blog and tell me why I should choose especially him or her. Let's wait for the best statements! On thursday, 8th of march 2007, I will choose the winner.

:)

Seems that Joost took my advice: More content from Viacom

OK, it seems that just one week after my blog post "Until now Joost is boring. Isn't it?" the people from Joost are taking my advice into account.

Viacom Inc. said today it has agreed to offer its videos to Joost, the Internet video service created by the founders of Skype. Hundreds of hours of programming from Viacom's MTV Networks, Paramount Pictures movies studio and BET Networks will be available to Joost users for free, says Reuters.

More details gives the official press release:

MTV Networks will provide premier content from several of its brands for launch. MTV will offer popular shows, both past and present, including Laguna Beach, Beavis & Butthead, Real World, Punk'd and My Super Sweet Sixteen, while COMEDY CENTRAL will feature episodes from Stella, CCP's and Freak Show. Nickelodeon, CMT: Country Music Television, MTV2, Logo, Spike TV, mtvU, and Gametrailers.com will also provide content. VH1's offerings will include episodes of Flavor of Love, Surreal Life, and I Love New York. BET's Networks' offerings will include some of its biggest shows, including Beef, DMX: Soul of a Man, Comic View and recent smash hit American Gangster. Also, Paramount Pictures, Paramount Vantage and Paramount Classics will be providing full- length feature films from their catalog of classics and recent releases.

Well, that's still quite a lot of MTV and the like crap. But I am looking forward to Paramount's movies. What I would really appreciate is a deal with Fox Television and ABC so that I could see my favourite shows on Joost: The Simpsons and Lost.

Until now Joost is boring. Isn't it?

People are still very enthusiastic about Joost, the new P2P television platform of the Skype founders. There is very much of a hype and every new feature is being commented in the news. But maybe that's only because there are so few beta testers. To me it seems that most of the people are hailing Joost but few have really tried it.

So let me tell you a secret: Joost is boring to me.

I am one of the few beta testers. Yesterday I tried Joost again, switched through the channels and nearly nothing has changed since I tried it weeks ago. The channels are presenting only clips that already would have bored me on MTV: fun sports, Paris Hilton, mainstream music and the like.

That's not what I expected from a new form of television, which has the capability to present unlimited tv content so that there also should be something for me. I am quite amazed how smoothly Joost works on a lame DSL internet connection. So the technology behind it must be great. But the content must still be a placeholder. At least I hope so and I imagine why it is like this: They had former MTV people in their team when Joost was still in stealth mode and it's name was the Venice Project.

Nevertheless my friends are very keen on Joost and would like to try it themselves. So they ask me for invites. But sorry, I can't. They just don't let me invite you:

Invitations

We're gradually expanding our network, and we'd like you to invite new people to come and join in.

Every once in a while you will receive tokens, enabling you to send invitations to friends, family or anyone else who you think will enjoy watching internet TV. Each invitation will cost you one token, regardless of whether your invitation has been accepted or refused.

Number of invitations you can send: 0

It seems that I am not the only one who can't invite, since others are also complaining in Joost's beta tester forum. No tokens, no invites.