Week of April 21, 2008

ISPs throttling peer-to-peer usage?

Friday, April 25, 2008

There have been allegations and rumors that large internet service providers (ISPs) like Comcast have been interrupting peer to peer traffic, effectively limiting the ability of file sharers to utilize the full bandwidth users have paid for. Vuze, the company that owns the file sharing client Azureus, decided to monitor peer to peer traffic through its client and see if any conclusions could be drawn. The results have been enlightening: A number of major ISPs significantly throttle peer to peer traffic to limit data transfers.

ISPs can do this by sending out RST messages, which reset data transfers and slow connections. Vuze didn't name any names, but they did revealingly contact AT&T with the following quote coming from their letter:

In reviewing our data we have identified that the rate of reset activity in the ASN pertaining to your company appears to be higher than many others.

We'll see how this plays out, but it certainly appears that ISPs are throttling user bandwidth when it is utlized via peer-to-peer sharing. One of the interesting questions this raises are what impact does this have on commercial companies that use peer to peer distribution to utilize their audio and/or video streaming?

Microsoft Mesh: Changing Our Future?

Thursday, April 24, 2008

What happens when the Chief Software Architect has a vision for the future, and puts 100 Microsoft engineers on the project, giving them two years to get the job done? You get Microsoft Mesh, which may just be a game-changer for how we interact with our applications and data. In short, Mesh is an online desktop that ties together all of your devices--laptop, mobile, desktop, and more--and syncs them all, so that you never need to worry about what is on one device but not the other.

This is done at the application level (for example, syncing Google calendars with your cell phone via Goosync), but this is a much grander vision. Microsoft sees Mesh as also syncing applications, which is a fancy way of saying that if you are a developer and create a web application, Mesh will sync the code so that it will work and be available on desktop and mobile devices. It's a formidable idea, and if successful, Mesh may just become the central Internet desktop starting point that Windows became in the eighties.

The Mesh beta launched yesterday, and is currently only for Windows software and devices, but the plan is for it to be an open system, able to "mesh" practically everything.

Facebook Chat Opens Up

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Facebook's chat functionality, which soft launched on April 6, is finally open to all users. If Facebook was a productivity killer before, now it is taking time consumption to a new level. Users can chat with any of their friends that are online, creating a more immediate communication experience than just posting on a user's wall or sending them a message.

This will undoubtedly increase Facebook's engagement time, which is becoming increasingly important in the world of online revenue and web ratings, with the page view becoming less and less important as time goes on. It's a reminder to traditional media companies, as well: Interactivity online is a key strategy for building the kind of traffic that leads to revenue.

Online Ad Spending Spurt in UK

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), has made an astonishing prediction about the growth of online ad spending in the UK. According to the IAB, online spending will surpass television to become the #1 advertising medium in 2009! They say that the economic slowdown is hitting TV advertising hard, while agencies continue to see results in online spending. Growth is expected to be 30% this year and next, putting online in front of television's $8 billion annual revenue. In comparison, online ad spending just surpassed radio in 2007. Projections for online to surpass TV in the US are expected to come well into the future.

Internet-only TV network video shows growing

Monday, April 21, 2008

It's just one example, but you are seeing it more and more: Television networks launching television shows that are created exclusively for an online audience. The example is Lifetime, and they recently announced 15 new webisodes for their myLifetime.com website.

The website as content originator, rather than a reflection of the channel (or newspaper) itself, is a trend that we will see across multiple media moving into the future.