Earlier this month, Viacom ordered YouTube to remove more than 100,000 unauthorized video clips posted on the popular video sharing site. Couple this with the December announcement that Viacom backed away from a proposed joint venture with NBC Universal, CBS, and News Corp. to form a “viral-video” site, and you could make the case that the company was just another paranoid media conglomerate struggling to keep up with the times — or so I assumed.
Imagine my surprise, then, when Viacom announced the other day that it has partnered with Joost, a company created in early 2006 by Niklas Zennstrôm and Janus Friis (founders of internet telephone company Skype and file sharing phenomenon KaZaA). The fact that Viacom had finally made a strategic decision is not as shocking as the way the deal was sealed. The media heavyweight has got game after all.
In early 2006, Zennstrôm and Friis rounded up some of the world’s best “engineers, web gurus, and media visionaries” to work on “The Venice Project.” What seemed to be a benign research and development initiative emerged as the framework for a global, high-quality video distribution system by the start of 2007. On January 16, the company abandoned the “Venice Project” code name and unveiled the Joost brand. Within a month, its partnership with Viacom — including its MTV, BET, and Paramount Pictures divisions — finalized the success of the startup’s secret slickness.
After reviewing the past year of Viacom news. I can’t help but wonder about how much of its online content struggles were just smoke and mirrors. What appeared to be big media fumbling has been revealed as an impressive and premeditated strategic plan. Needless to say, I will be revisiting NBC’s, CBS’, and News Corp.’s past news and paying closer attention to the activities of other seemingly benign digital media startups. YouTube should probably do the same.
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