Skype founders unveil 'YouTube Killer'
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (UPI) -- The Dutch founders of the Skype Internet telephone service Tuesday unveiled a "YouTube Killer" Internet-based TV service called Joost.
Joost -- pronounced "juiced" -- will let users watch ad-supported TV shows after they download free software based on the same file-sharing architecture that powers Skype, said Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, who sold Skype to eBay Inc. for $2.7 billion in 2005 and earlier built and sold the file-sharing program Kazaa.
Joost will also let users rewind or fast-forward within a show, like digital video recorders can do with standard television, CIO Today reports.
Joost hopes to replicate the TV experience on the Internet, filling a "critical gap" in online entertainment, Joost Chief Executive Fredrik de Wahl said.
And because the Joost browser will be open for outside software developers to create their own features, the service will grow "in ways we can't even think of," de Wahl said.
Joost, to be based in London, is accepting applications for people to try out the service's "beta" version.
The company did not say when it would officially launch the product.
Copyright 2007 by United Press International
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