A new company headed by the Kazaa and Skype guys is going to launch officially in the next few days apparently. It's called JOOST and it's an IPTV service which means it is TV online essentially.
Interestingly enough, there is word that this service will be more than just TV. AND, in an effort to socialize IPTV and make it active in some sense, JOOST is experimenting with a feature to have live chats with those who tend to watch similar content.
It'd be an odd thing to talk to someone about a show right after or before watching it. We spoke in class before about how TV might just be a passive thing forever because that's how we like it. However, JOOST creators seem to have different ideas for web based broadcasts.
I wonder how this IPTV project could be turned into a TV based social network. We are a nation of TV watchers...If somehow we were to make TV a social thing, would this not be a very powerful network?
Do you know if they'll be charging to watch the IPTV?
I wonder if people will use this. If they were to make use of existing chat frameworks like AIM or Jabber it's possible that this could be really successful; using AIM and watching TV are both leisure activities that you will do when you don't really want to think about anything. There are cool political implications here for an open forum and discussion of media spin and political events, but I wonder if it will actually be used for this purpose. I tend to think not, but I am unsure.