In an effort to try and regain viewers to its online service, Joost has introduced a browser plug-in for its video service (see Broadband TV News passim). Still in beta, the new plug-in should give viewers the possibility to view the online video service without the need to download the dedicated client software, which was needed until now.
Unfortunately, the new plug-in proved to be more of a problem than a blessing for Apple Mac owners using the latest version of Firefox. After installing the plug-in, the browser crashes every time the user tries to launch the browser. Several blog writers on the web also report that after the crash the Joost plugin continues to run sharing the bandwidth for P2P usage.
According to Joost, the sitiation should by now have been resolved. Matt Zelesko, head of engineering at Joost, wrote on his blog: “we experienced some issues this morning on Mac / Firefox. Those problems were addressed quickly and we have a new version available now.” (On a personal note: given the amount of aggravation and not to mention the extra work it gave us last Friday, we are not yet prepared to try the new version)
Apart from these technical hiccups, Joost also needs to resolve its major problem, which is lack of suitable content to attract viewers and bring them back.
