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HDDb.netBefore JOOST, there was FireAnt
This is going to be a relatively quick post as I’m at work, up to my eyeballs. That being said, I was skimming Wired this morning and came across an article about Josh Kinberg - a protester who at the 2004 Republican National Convention in NYC created a “dot matrix sidewalk printer bike” - as he rode it around, it printed messages (in water soluble chalk) that people texted to the bike. Of course, he was arrested (read the Wired story), the NYPD are a bunch of freedom-hating goons, and so on.
But - that’s not where Kinberg’s story ends. As the article mentions, he’s now on the opposite coast, involved (as in “founder and ceo”) in a “social media” project called FireAnt.
FireAnt is a desktop media player and RSS aggregator for Windows and Mac. With an integrated guide to Internet TV, the FireAnt player lets users subscribe to, download, and watch videos in multiple media formats, and synchronize video with portable devices, including iPod, PSP, Zen, Archos, Zune, and mobile phones. [from FireAnt > About]
That sounds a lot like JOOST to me, albeit without the major network relationships & content. And, FireAnt, in its current incarnation, has been available since January of ‘06, when it got a glowing review from TC.
Unfortunately, FireAnt appears to be stagnating. Take a look at Alexa and Compete - JOOST hasn’t even launched, and its flattened FireAnt’s very modest growth.
Perhaps its their confusing brand strategy. The site is at “getfireant.com,” though the page title refers to “fireant.tv.” “antisnottv.com” is also floating around out there - it took me a while to parse that out as “ant - is - not - tv.” Perhaps that confrontational relationship with the mainstream consumer’s desired experience (i.e.: watching TV) is why JOOST is buzz-worthy and FireAnt is flat. People like TV. They’re used to it, they know what to expect - its comfortable. JOOST is iterating TV - keeping it comfy and recognizeable, but also recognizably better enough to drive adoption. It appears FireAnt hasn’t found this balance yet.
All of that being said: I’m not going to be able to download and try out the FireAnt application until tonite. Has anyone out there tried it? Share your thoughts in the comments.
[...] original post HERE [...]
Hi Techfold,
Glad you found FireAnt through the Wired article. FireAnt was actually the very first desktop RSS video player, and it really came out of a grassroots effort within the videoblogging community (at the time, there were only a few dozen videobloggers) — before YouTube, before iTunes w/ video, before Democracy. In fact, one of our original Mac developers is now the lead Mac developer for Joost. We launched the first version of FireAnt (then called ANT) in Jan. 2005. Since then we’ve gone through different iterations of the software and changed URLs a few times. Our website was originally just a place where you could download out FireAnt software, but today it functions as a “guide to Internet TV channels”, and its really designed to be used inside the FireAnt player, which has had around 400,000 downloads over the last year. We are very excited about the upcoming major new release of FireAnt — at this time we are accepting sign-ups for beta testing, but the download is not yet available. Please sign-up and stay tuned. We really appreciate your feedback. Thanks!
Best,
Josh
Actually, one point I forgot to make…
I think Joost is very cool, and have been using the beta version on Windows for a while. It’s going to revolutionize TV and the Joost UI is groundbreaking.
Joost is really a very different application than FireAnt. We are only team of 6 and they are well over a 100 with a lot of funding behind them.
FireAnt is focused on syndicated, downloadable video content from the Web (specifically video podcasts, or “internet tv”), and syncing with portable devices, while Joost is targeting larger content providers and delivering streaming video exclusively.
As such, we’re not in direct competition with Joost — they will definitely be giving Comcast, DirecTV and other mainstream cable/satellite TV providers a run for their money
Hey Joshua - thank-you very much for your comments! I’m on the run hard to day, and am guilty of posting without researching fully - it certainly sounds like you and JOOST are reaching for different things, and I’m looking forward to trying out the FireAnt player and making a proper post about this. Until then, thank-you again for your comments and patience - and best regards!
-Rod.
New version of Fireant coming, huh?… If it took this long to put out a new version it better be good.
I think Fireant lost all it’s users to Democracy (not Joost) a long time ago. From the Compete chart it looks like Fireant is on deathwatch anyway. I wonder how long it will take them to go belly up…
What’s the scrap value of a fireant?
[...] - I was pretty disappointed. When I originally stumbled across FireAnt, I’d hoped to have discovered a JOOST in sheep’s clothing - especially after reading [...]
[...] first posted about FireAnt in April, where I pointed out that their branding was confusing, their traffic was petering out, and that [...]
[...] does better than the last, almost identical entrant in this market: crowd favourite FireAnt (see initial review comparing FireAnt to Joost, later problems, and “acquisition“). boing boing, cory doctorow, doctorow, fireant, [...]