Skype- A New Disruptive Use for P2P
Forget viral marketing, forget PPCSE, forget search engine optimization. When you create a product that is so simple and so great at what it does mouth-to-mouth advertising is all you need! You have instant evangelists for your brand.
Skype (from the people who brought you KaZaA), it’s no hype and after trying it I can say that I really dig this application. Skype uses P2P technology to allow users to make low-cost phone calls and even better all Skype-to-Skype calls are free.
This has truly empowered my business where I frequently work with developers in Belgium, France, Nova Scotia and other places outside of the U.S. The phone bills alone can be daunting and sometimes instant messaging applications like ICQ or AIM just don’t cut the mustard. The program has not been without glitches (the occasional crash) but overall I give it a thumbs up for version 1.0- especially the ability to make free conference calls. Although I still find FreeConference to be the best choice for those needing highly polished services..
Skype describes itself as a disruptive technology:
Peer-to-peer (“P2P”) technology was first widely deployed and popularized by file-sharing applications such as Napster and KaZaA. In this context, P2P technology allows users to share, search for and download files. The P2P moniker has been widely used and just as often abused. Companies both large and small, self-proclaimed “pundits” and others to trying to cash in on the “P2P buzz” use this term as long as it involves some direct communication between users or nodes. This description of P2P completely misses the point.
A true P2P system, in our opinion, is one where all nodes in a network join together dynamically to participate in traffic routing-, processing- and bandwidth intensive tasks that would otherwise be handled by central servers.
A true P2P application empowers small teams with good ideas to develop software and businesses that can successfully challenge those of large companies. True P2P, when applied to ripe markets, is disruptive technology.
