The net is soooo ripe for a distributed replacement of Youtube, Facebook, Gmail, etc. Once upon a time those sorts of sites provided real value in hosting files, pictures, video and providing a well-known endpoint like gmail.
But now we have phones with 64GB of flash for canonical storing of files, p2p protocols for efficient transfer of files and distributed hash tables for finding files. Someone is going to come along with a distributed system that gains enough traction and just wipe all of these guys off the map.
To paraphrase the founder of RedHat, whatever comes next won't be the size of Youtube, it will make youtube the size of a bittorrent tracker.
> But now we have phones with 64GB of flash for canonical storing of files, p2p protocols for efficient transfer of files and distributed hash tables for finding files.
And 2 GB data caps. I don't want my phone's hard drive, processing power, and my cell phone bill all being used up for P2P videos.
So, let your phone hold the canonical copy and let the swarm handle the efficient transfer of files -- not everybody will be on cellular data plans, hell you won't be on a cellular data plan when you are within range of a wifi AP like at home or the office.
If you think it's so easy, then you build it. Some of that has been done, some of it has yet to be done. But so far it sucks compared to the centralized system.
But now we have phones with 64GB of flash for canonical storing of files, p2p protocols for efficient transfer of files and distributed hash tables for finding files. Someone is going to come along with a distributed system that gains enough traction and just wipe all of these guys off the map.
To paraphrase the founder of RedHat, whatever comes next won't be the size of Youtube, it will make youtube the size of a bittorrent tracker.