After debuting to a great deal of fanfare in 2006, it looks as if Joost will finally be giving up on P2P as a means of delivery for its content. In a message to users of its software application, the company said videos after Friday would only be viewable through the website.

The writing may have been on the wall then: Joost launched its web-based platform in October to generally positive reviews. Last month, it debuted an iPhone application, which appears still to be unaffected by the company’s decision.

Joost’s software application was an attempt at keeping bandwidth costs low by distributing some of the streaming to the P2P network. However, it must at this point just be an unnecessary extra expense to develop, and streaming videos using Flash (like everybody else) is obviously more economical.

With Joost pulling out of P2P, analysts like Forrester’s James McQuivey are saying the use of P2P for legal means is now a thing of the past:

Peer-to-peer “as a platform for legal consumer video is dead. The majority of what people watch on the PC is streamed. More than half the country is on broadband and compression is very effective now.”

Seems so far from the talk in the middle of this decade where many legitimate companies were looking to use P2P as a legal way to transfer content. Now, all but a few are out of business or have significantly altered their business models.

 
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