What a decade it's been! From Napster to BitTorrent, from RazorBack2 to The Pirate Bay, so many P2P communities have come and gone. But we're still around after all these years; now that we're all a bit older and wiser, what amazing things will come in the next decade?

Napster

What it was: Napster was one of the first mainstream P2P networks where millions could search and download just about any song. It certainly wasn’t the first P2P network - people had been sharing MP3s well before Naspter’s arrival. But it was revolutionary when it first arrived because Napster altered the course of music history and changed the way millions of people found and shared music.

What made it great: It’s the community, stupid! Naspter wasn’t technologically groundbreaking, but the community it formed was. Never before had the Internet accumulated so many music lovers in one spot. Hundreds and thousands of music chat rooms existed on Napster’s network – where the end user could find countless sources of new music. Despite the overwhelming popularity of subsequent networks, few have ever recreated the divine experience that Napster once was.

Where it is today: Within a few months of launching in 1999, Napster was sued by the music industry, represented by the RIAA. It died a slow and agonizing death, until the lights finally went out in 2001. Napster’s brand was resurrected as a pay service, but struggles to find a foothold against the iTunes juggernaut.

BitTorrent

What it is: BitTorrent remains the most popular protocol for sharing information online. When it was first launched in 2001, it sat on the P2P sidelines when other heavy hitters absorbed most of Napster’s refugees. Unlike most P2P protocols at the times, BitTorrent was designed to transfer large files efficiently. It does this by creating swarms of users sharing identical files. How do peers find these swarms? With a tracker and torrent files – the future of file-sharing.

What made it great: Its best attribute remains its ability to disseminate large pieces of data efficiently. This wasn’t too important when BitTorrent was first released, but as more people acquired broadband and a thirst for TV shows and movies, BitTorrent quickly became the go to community. This helped BitTorrent gain popularity previously unknown in the file-sharing world, as millions of users surrounded communities such as SuprNova and The Pirate Bay.

Date: 2009-12-14 Source: http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=1888