Overcoming the Network Effects?

paul_harrison asks: "I am trying to introduce a new P2P protocol. It's technically superior in several respects to existing protocols, but there's one big problem: too few people using it. Now this is not a new problem, there's even a name for it, "Network Effect". It crops up all over the place: which websites become popular, which formats and protocols people use, which operating systems people use, even which side of the road people drive on... So my question is this: how do things like these overcome network effects and become popular?"

Comments

Obvious

[Clue4All]

Post a story on Slashdot about it. Too bad it didn't make it onto the front page, you'd be all set.

P2P clients become popular...

[Ummagumma]

...by word of mouth. Get your friends on it, your families, your co-workers, thier friends, etc. It will soon spread.

missing key features

[tps12]

You need to add random crashes, spyware, and poor interface design before it will catch on. These add to the thrill and danger of pirating music and software.

Money

[aozilla]

Advertising and abuse of monopoly power are the two main ways.

You contradict yourself

[whoda]

You say: "Which means no censorship, no entry taxes, no one booting you off the network, and no weak point which can break the whole system."

Then at the end you state: "In particular, if you try to share snuff or child pornography, I will be able to work out you IP and from that your location and identity. And I will report you to the police."

So, which is it? P2P with no censorship, no booting, or P2P With censorship and booting?

Re:You contradict yourself

[WiKKeSH]

Oh no - he's censoring child pornographers. Heavens to betsy.

Unless you're terribly broken up about some sick bastard being sent to jail for child porn, get over it.

No, we do not like child pornographers.
No, I wouldn't be torn by any of them going to jail.
Hell, I think they all should be shot.

But, that isnt the point. The author sas there will be no banning. But he tells us he will ban child pornographers?
Once he changes his wording, I will be happy, but I dunno if the rest of the people will be.

Re:You contradict yourself

[moncyb]

The author sas there will be no banning. But he tells us he will ban child pornographers?

You misunderstand. There is no contradiction. You can share all the child porn and snuff all you want, but you will also be reported to the police. No banning involved, however it'll be quite hard to share your files when your computer has been impounded and you are in prison. ;-)

What problem are you solving?

[anthony_dipierro]

It seems like you're merely making minor improvements to something that's already out there. That rarely works, and I highly doubt it will work in this case. Your network is not anonymous, and you threaten to report IP addresses to the police. So basically your network is only for legal files. That's a fine niche, but what advantage do you offer over http and ftp? Probably not very much.

Re:What problem are you solving?

[darksaber]

This work doesn't solve any new problems and is essentially the same as Chord , a project at MIT, which has the same basic layout but in a more structured fashion (as far as I can tell from his slides). Chord came out over a year ago (they submitted to last year's SIGCOMM which would have been due in early 2001). He mentions that they're very similar, but as far as I can tell, there is nothing new in his implementation and it isn't necessarily as good. The Chord guys actually prove how fast their system works while he just waves his hands. They also have a paper about how to actually implement a p2p file system over it (I think they give a reference to someone who actually did it too).

There's no good reason this work should have been accepted. Whoever reviewed for this linux.conf.au dropped the ball in a big way. A real academic reviewer would have eaten him alive it.

Compatibility.

[Matt2000]

You're probably going to have to offer some form of compatibility layer with the other networks. That's how Limewire got it's improved Gnutella protocol out there.

That is assuming that your protocol really does offer tangible benefits and people will want to continue using it when the other networks are available to them as well.

target a genre specific music community

[spaceling]

You could popularize your app by going to a specific music community like ambient or idm at hyperreal.org and offering your application for file sharing among the list subscribers. Soulseek is a file sharing app which became popular for idm listeners (see soulseek.org). The great concentration of interesting files for like minded users will make your app competitive for these users. This user base should help you develop your app. Eventually the apps popularity should add more and more users from outside these smaller communities.

No contradiction at all...

[damiangerous]

No one has the ability to remove you from the network, or control ("censor") what you share. However, you are not completely anonymous on the network, and if you share something illict you can be found if someone really wants to (which this fellow apparently does).

Contradictions are killers....

[blankmange]

While you are trying to do something rather valiant, the problems arise in your contradicting statements:

"...no censorship, no entry taxes, no one booting you off the network, and no weak point which can break the whole system."

versus

"In particular, if you try to share snuff or child pornography, I will be able to work out you IP and from that your location and identity. And I will report you to the police."

So which is it? Censored or not? While you may be trying to do the moral thing here, this 'censorship' will be the downfall of your P2P network and it will probably not progress beyond your own little 'circle'.

Use the network Luke- or something ;-)

[WolfWithoutAClause]

Mainly you should use the network to propogate yourself. e.g. provide patches for the next version of Apache so that all of the users of the Apache web servers end up talking to each other and download from each other, rather than the server. This could beat the slashdot effect to some reasonable extent- a lot of files are fixed; particularly distros, jpgs, mpgs, html etc.