A little OT, but interesting nonetheless
P2P Not Just the Latest Ugly Acronym
By Jim Seymour
Special to TheStreet.com
8/24/00 8:17 PM ET
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A Wall Street Journal story Wednesday took the wind out of the sails of a column I'd been working on on the broader impact of the technology behind, roughly speaking, Napster, Gnutella and the all-media newcomer Scour.
Or at least that's what I thought at first.
The Journal story recounted Intel (INTC:Nasdaq - news - boards) CEO Craig Barrett's comments at the Intel Developer Forum this week in San Jose. Barrett shook a lot of people's trees at the forum, announcing new chips, new marketing initiatives and more. But on Wednesday, backed up by Intel Architecture Lab Chief Technology Officer Pat Gelsinger, Barrett talked about what some will see as his most subversive move yet: fostering the growth of P2P, or "peer-to-peer" systems.
That's what drives Napster and its lookalikes. My computer communicates -- shares files with -- your computer, aided by a third-party system that helps bring us together. The files don't pass from my PC to that third-party system and thence to your PC, but between us directly. The idea is just that simple -- though it has a lot of kinks and bends in the road -- and yes, it's just that subversive.
In fact, the world of P2P is far larger, and will be far more profitable, than the single application discussed by Barrett with the Journal writer.
Consider eBay (EBAY:Nasdaq - news - boards). CEO Meg Whitman, speaking at the Pacific Crest 2000 conference in Vail, Colo., last week, did just that. Her killer presentation helped drive eBay shares up from the high 40s before her appearance to the high 50s Thursday. But asked later in Vail by a CNet reporter about how P2P might affect eBay's revenues, she was dodgy.
Understandably, because one effect of P2P's huge popularity could be to spawn would-be eBay-killers, connecting auction sellers and buyers directly through a simple indexing service. Sellers would pay a much smaller fee -- or, conceivably, none -- than they do at present, which could undercut eBay's market strength.
In fact, I think eBay management is more than smart and flexible enough to withstand such a shift -- eBay would try to effectively co-opt the P2P-driven auction business, and could at least make a move in that direction -- but a threat is a threat, and this one is real.
Millions of users have tasted the ease and convenience of P2P connections through Napster, and the smaller but equally vigorous user communities around Gnutella and Scour are also fast becoming hooked.
If the Web and e-commerce were all about disintermediation, then P2P is disintermediation with a vengeance.
The uses of P2P are vast, and if you think Napster's new management -- CEO Hank Barry, a Hummer-Winblad partner who came along with the VC firm's $15-million investment in the Nap in mid-May -- jumped into the company mainly because it wants to help people trade Eminem tunes, you're missing the boat.
Working within Napster, as on one level it tries to solve its copyright problems with the big record labels, gives the Hummer people great insight into what it takes to make P2P work in other areas. (And I should say here, lest I get buried by readers' emails suggesting I don't understand how this works, that Napster, Gnutella and Scour all work somewhat differently, the principal difference being that Gnutella distances itself somewhat more effectively from users' communications.)
The uses of P2P are going to be vast, and we're just now beginning to understand that, just now in the very early stages of what some Net gurus are saying could be the "post-browser Web." Or maybe, the post-browser Net.
If you haven't worked with any of these programs, you really need to. Whether your tastes run to Mel Torme or Metallica, you really should download the Napster code from its Web site, www.napster.com, and search for, then download, a song or two. I'm not encouraging theft, just trying to foster an understanding of how powerful this technology can be and get you thinking about how many ways it could be used. And how money will be made in P2P.
Barrett and Gelsinger understand that -- they clearly "get" P2P -- and they approach the power of P2P connections from a different perspective. Barrett wants to push Intel into supporting P2P connections as a way of linking up all those unused CPU cycles on companies' PCs, and all that unused storage capacity on those PCs' hard disks, to undertake huge computing tasks that are presently the domain of supercomputers.
That's not how P2P was originally envisioned, but it's a great example of how such a powerful idea can be turned to new and unimagined purposes.
Too early to invest in P2P, but not too early to start thinking about how it can be used in world-scale commerce. Lots more coming here on potential uses of P2P. |
