Joost, the new social TV project by Kazaa and Skype founders Niklas Zennstrøm and Janus Friis, has just left the closed beta phase and has recently switched to (for lack of a better term) open beta.
One of the things announced is that there’s a developer kit in the making, which will allow hackers to come up with new widgets and all kinds of cool stuff. (I’m already curious what’s going to pop up!)
But even with the existing set of features, Joost may be useful for other things than just watching some new comedy shows before they are in a country near you.
How about political campaigning, for a start? I’m not sure Joost will even stream political events. But if they do (and why wouldn’t they?), there’s a bunch of cool stuff you could do with it, no matter if you’re a campaigner or an interested citizen.
Joost channel chat feature allows users to have a chats or to IM each other within the channel they’re watching.
- Let’s imagine a speech during the U.S. elections, say by Hillary Clinton. How about giving your campaign supporters the chance, to have a live discussion right there while the speech is on? It could be done openly or in a closed group, given the right widgets.
- Same goes for a TV debate between several candidates: Why not have them comment live on events, or each other’s speeches?
- How about decentralized campaign teams who could use it to analyze speeches live, so they can coordinate their responses towards the media?
Admittedly, all of this can be done with other tools as well, and maybe better so. Still, having it at hand, and given Joost’s integration with Google Talk and other services, I’d say there’s plenty of potential to be tapped. And that’s before there are community-created widgets. Ooooh, this is going to be fun…
ps. If you’re looking for a Joost invite, leave a comment with your name and email address or drop me a line.
