File Sharing Is The New EMail

A few days ago Dave Winer talked about next steps for Bit Torrent. Good time to point him to my story on Business 2.0/CNN Money website, about three start-ups that are taking peer-to-peer networking to the next level, making it easy for rest of us.

This new wave of file-sharing startups isn’t aiming to share music or Hollywood movies, however. It’s just using the technology to speed and simplify the problem of moving a large file from computer A to computer B.

The three companies included in the story are Pando, Perenety and Wired Reach. Their P2P apps are called Pando, Shooter and Box Cloud respectively. Pando and Box Cloud are cross platform while Perenety’s Shooter is a windows only application.

While Pando has tried to keep its application close to the email-attachment model, Perenety has modeled its Shooter application after Skype, the voice-over-Internet-protocol outfit which was bought by eBay (Research), says co-founder Xavier Casanova. It may seem like an unlikely comparison, but Perenety, which is now conducting a limited test of Shooter, is emulating Skype’s one-to-one connectivity and buddy-list features. Just as Skype connects two PCs directly for a call and tells you which people are available to talk, Perenety connects PCs directly for speedier file transfers and lets you know when your contacts share new files.

You can read the full story at the CNN Money website Screenshots after the turn!

Programming Note: I am busy finishing up stories for the magazine so posting is going to be sporadic in the near foreseeable future.