Let the onslaught commence. The Joost/Babelgum plan is worth a shot. Not just for them, but for lots of organisations.

Hire a tech team and pull together a peer to peer video player. I bet a cost-conscious outfit could do that well for well under $400k. Promote it to early adopters via blogs, digg, PR to tech journalists etc. Not much more cash.

The prize comes if you build an audience and a strong brand - getting lots of peers on your network, and better performance than the competition. It's the same model as VOIP. So, no coincidence that the Skype founders are behind Joost.

How many will try this? Lots. How many can succeed? Probably only a few.

Joost are taking the high-ground on rights ownership They're only letting content on their platform that has been licenced from established media players. So far it doesn't seem to be going very well. After months of toil, their content acquisition team has one big deal - a non-exclusive arrangement with MTV Networks, on the rebound from their old partnership with Google, which Youtube has turned ugly.

It's a chicken and egg situation. Media companies are unlikely to give you a good deal on content unless you aggregate a big audience, and they start to need you. But you need that content to get in the game.

Of course, this is a familiar pattern in the media industry. A company like Viacom used to be able to name its price to fledgling cable or satellite operators who wanted to carry a channel like MTV. Now many of those operators have a firm lock on the path into MTV viewer's homes, and reduce the carriage fees savagely on every fresh negotiation.

Joost have made a bit of a stir. Maybe their PR machine can pull them through? Or maybe they should relax their content principles a bit? There's a hint that Babelgum might be doing just that. They say "We are looking for high-quality content from professional or semi-pro producers. We also welcome good quality video blogger."

It seems much smarter to build your audience around content from owners who actually need your platform, then negotiate with the big guys from a stronger position.