Joost: another delivery channel for the videos produced at your institution?

Everybody is talking about online videos lately (well, the fact that it’s Day 2 of the Higher Ed Experts’ series about online videos might explain some of the chatter in my virtual neighborhood ;-)

A recent report by the Pew Internet and American Life Project confirms that online videos have become a must-have web features as more and more of our target audiences spend time watching them on their computer screen.

So, now that you have started to produce and post your online videos on your website, your YouTube channel or even on MySpace and Facebook, what’s next?

Joost might be worth investigating, at least if you’d like to follow the lead from the Vancouver Film School.

In a press release I received last week, VFS announced the creation of 2 channels of its own on Joost:

“We are ecstatic at the prospect of bringing our students’ work to a whole new audience,” said Stephen Webster, Vancouver Film School’s Director of Marketing. “Being the first school to partner with Joost is a testament to the quality and diversity of student work being produced at VFS. We look forward to a long and entertaining future with Joost.”

VFS will provide two distinct channels on Joost to a worldwide audience: Animation & Visual Effects and Drama & Documentary. Both will feature work created by VFS students during their intensive year at the school. The channels will launch with a wide variety of films, and the school will be uploading new content every month.

But, what on earth is Joost?

It might be the future of TV if you believe its founders (as well as the A-list Geek blogosphere):

Founded by Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström (Kazaa and Skype Founders), Joost combines the best of TV and the best of the Internet by offering viewers a full-screen audiovisual experience enhanced with the choice, control and flexibility of Web 2.0. Joost is the first online, global TV distribution platform, bringing together advertisers, content owners and viewers in an interactive, community-driven environment.

If you want to learn about it, you can also read the Wikipedia article about Joost.

I got an invite to test Joost a couple of months ago (as some of you might have), and was able to watch several shows from a few topical channels. I remember seeing channels about cars, weddings and geography among others.

The partnership makes sense for VFS as its students create and produce a lot of professional grade work (hey, it’s a professional film school ;-). Your institution wouldn’t be able to feed a channel of its own, but a joint effort could work.

Imagine for a second, a channel on Joost where you could watch short videos about the latest research done in universities all across the world. That would be great. And, what about a channel where prospective students could watch videos presenting different institutions?

While Joost hasn’t gone mainstream yet, I think it’s worth thinking about it. Don’t you?

BTW, if you want to check it out, the folks at VFS offer free invites on this page (you’ll need to download an application to test Joost).