I’ve had a chance to talk to AllPeers founders Cedric Maloux and Matthew Gertner. This company is set to take the world by storm. In my opinon this single firefox extension will massively increase the attractiveness of that already popular browser, drawing more millions away from embattled Internet Explorer.
AllPeers is a simple, persistent buddy list in the browser. Initially, interaction with those buddies will be limited to discovering and sharing files – If you choose to, you can share any file on your network with one or more of your friends. They will be able to see what files you choose to share (even getting an RSS feed of new files you include), and with a single click download it to their own hard drive.
AllPeers will work even when the sharer is offline – AllPeers is a bittorent client, and will allow files to be pulled from multiple sources. When downloading, the file may be grabbed partially or fully from others you have shared it with (or who shared it with you). So a user just clicks on a file, and waits for it to eventually download. Screen shots can be viewed here.
With AllPeers, I can share photos and home movies with my parents, songs (and anything else) with friends, and also access the files that they choose to share.
In the future, AllPeers will also have folders to allow public sharing (probably with restrictions to control copyright violations). I also assume they will build chat and VOIP functionality into the application as well.
AllPeers will not be advertising funded. There are hints that the business model may eventually be centered on monetization of paid content, but that will be down the road. For now, they are focused on launching with the basic shared-folder approach. And that is fine with me – I’ll be hooked from the second I can get my hands on it.
AllPeers has seven employees, is based in Prague and is a UK company. They are self and angel funded to date. If you’d like to sign up for the beta, enter your email here. An initial batch of beta testers should get their hands on it later this month.
Thanks Greg and Jordan for telling me about this.
Can’t wait to get it. This is something I wanted for a long time. While today’s Flickrs are pretty good, I still have issues sharing photo and movies with my family. I hope this will help.
I also hope Allpeers will provide integration APIs.
Glad to see P2P entering the Web 2.0 ecosphere.
Mike,
Great speaking with you! May I just say that we are not using a “bittorent-like technology” but that AllPeers is actually a complete BitTorrent client.
Best wishes and look for that beta test invitation coming VERY soon in your Inbox
Cedric.
I hope my beta test invitation is “coming VERY soon” too.
Cedric, Thanks for the clarification. I made changes to the text above.
looks pretty sweet
I hope my beta invite is “coming very soon” too…
What’s powering the buddylist? If they use XMPP, they would be a few steps away from integrating a full chat client (with voice and video support soon courtesy of JINGLE / Google Talk).
Doesn’t it occur to anyone that a ‘UK company’ based on Prague might be slightly dodgy?
Thank god! I’ve had so much trouble sharing files with friends since leaving college. All the good p2p networks are dead. Bittorrent is only good for sharing big things with many people. E-mail attachments suck. And IM file transfers are unreliable as hell. FTP servers are client-server not p2p. I’m just itching to get my hands on allpeers, finally p2p sharing that is teh awesome.
Damn, can’t wait for this to hit Flock. Totally awesome stuff.
How we love to re-invent the wheel 3 years later. This looks like Opencola’s buddy browser. RIP.
It’s worth noting that Microsoft recently bought FolderShare (http://www.foldershare.com/), a similar service praised by Mossberg:
http://ptech.ws...h-20050901.html
O man, what a cool looking extension! I’m all for applications that allow me to easily share files. This app has one feature that I think is all too comonly overlooked in the web 2.0 sphere and that is the ability to privately share content. I wonder if it will be OS X compatible.
Ummm, it seems like bit torrent won’t be terribly useful for sharing “family pics” I mean how many downloaders can you possibly have? Which makes me wonder who the real market is:)
Coolness. I know Matt from back in the early days of the ebXML and related XML standards back in the 2000 timeframe. Hopefully he’ll see this and get me one of them beta accounts before everyone else. hehehe Way to go Matt! Best of luck in 2006 and onward! Can’t wait to take this tech for a spin!
Is there any protection against a buddy becoming infected, and unknowingly offering tainted files to their friends?
To quote my own blog,
“Here’s a nifty little extension for Firefox which lets you share the contents of your media files with your friends. P2P without the public – or the RIAA house detectives – able to see what you are sharing.
With broadband and this sort of private, virus/adware/malware free, enviornment my CD collection is your CD collection…Brilliant and another reason why the current copyright regime is doomed.”
Why to use Explorer, firefox and extensions is all what we need
A great idea for a great browser. Cant wait to chk it out.
This looks great – I’d love to try it, though I somewhat doubt I’ll get chosen.
I had the pleasure to meet with the founders thanks to Alban.
It’s great technology with great guys behind it !!!!!
Best sucess for them in 2006.
If this meets expectations I am sure it will be the last nail in IE’s coffin. This will be incredible.
This is deadly, believe me, this will not only hurt IE but also hurt winodows o/p system, whose file sharing and visibility with ease is also a good selling point.
If this is what these guys promise, I reckon firefox will become hugely popular. I’m more than happy to buy shares in Mozilla and AllPeers, if they go publicly listed. Belive me Returns on this will be more as compared to Google in short time.
Can’t wait for it.
This looks like an amazing extension. I think the most interesting prospect is the fact that users are bound to find uses for this above and beyond the expectations of the creators… I am excited.
This looks so wicked! Sucks its invite only
I’ll be sure to get it when it releases
Cool – this sounds attractive and definitely has potential. Will this extension be Open Source? How do we know it’s secure? What will we do when it’s compromised and the script kiddies are enthusiastically exploiting some vulnerability to crack our computers? Will we be able to fix it ourselves or will we have to beg you for a patch and then wait around until one is supplied?
Servers are not allowed on RoadRunner. Read the TOS.
#13 are you a retard? this IS bitorrent. sigh.
This looks amazing, I’d love to be able to share my photo’s that easily.
Amazing extension for an amazing browser!
As a member of a clan I can see us making great use of this. Sharing maps, mods and game updates. This is going to be a great hit, just have to get the rest of the guys into Firefox. This should be a no-brainer…
http://www.tssclan.co.uk
How is this an improvement on WASTE? Seems like it’s reinventing the wheel a little.
UK company based in Prague, but domain registration contact in France???
Registrant: Make this info private
RWCM LTD
Le Clos Valfere
Route De Capon Le Pinet
SAINT TROPEZ, 83990
FR
Domain Name: ALLPEERS.COM
Administrative Contact :
RWCM LTD
cmaloux@yahoo.co.uk
Le Clos Valfere
Route De Capon Le Pinet
SAINT TROPEZ, 83990
FR
Phone: +33442521957
Technical Contact :
ABRICOO SARL
contact@abricoo.com
112 Avenue De Paris
VINCENNES, 94300
FR
Phone: +33143651501
Record expires on 15-Mar-2006
Record created on 15-Mar-2003
Database last updated on 08-Mar-2005
I doubt that one extension will really expand marketshare much. Honestly, this doesn’t appeal to me – I have email & IRC to contact friends, why would I want it? More overhyped “web 2.0″ rubbish, in my manifestly superior opinion
.
Prague, Saint Tropez, UK, all Old Europe,
all EU.
This must be Americans ….
Would you worry about a company having headquarters in Atlanta and Development Labs in Los Angeles area?
I don’t mean to put a damper on everyone’s enthusiam for this software, but the first thing that ran through my mind after reading this post was that this app could easily become a security nightmare. Maybe I’m wrong, but it sure doesn’t sound like the developers of this app or the author of this article have given any thought to the potential abuses of this technology. For everyone’s sake, I hope security will not be an afterthought for this product (as is typical for most software these days).
AWESOME! Now, how do I get this cool extension? Invites? Mailing list? Yes, I didn’t read that part
This is the best blog ever!!!
Please, its spelled Firefox NOT FireFox…
There must be at least 1 central server to maintain the IP address references. A 100% P2P is too costly in computing powers to the peer’s side.
This extension sounds like a corporate nightmare to me. Have the founders thought about Intellectual Property on corporate networks? Or that companies use their internet bandwidth / traffic allowance for business critical applications and data transfers? What about quality of service on corporate networks, prioritising of traffic, firewalling needs, proxy requirements, virus/spam/grayware/adware transmission? That extension has the capability of the biggest time waster ever on employee’s workstations.
This is what BitTorrent should have done with the $ they got
Bit Torrent stinks for small private networks….why is this getting so much hype????
#74 This will immediately be banned on corporate networks that care about security. Not only the security implications, but what an employee time waster to boot.
#42 & #44 Not likely. IE still has 85+% share of the browser market for one reason: corporations standardize on it, and will be very slow to change. What you use at home is irrelevant to toppling IE’s dominance.
This is a bunch of over-hype ….. “take the world by storm” … hardly.
Well what everybody was waiting for!! The best browser with what seems to be a great option in file sharing applications (if not the best too!!) Everybody has had the need to send files to a friend or family and with this client, things might just get a little bit easier and of course at home it will rock!! Congrats for that great idea!!
It’s very exciting and i have thoughts and want to develope it . The enfra(www.enfra.net) already launched beta released service that have a very similar idea , although it’s not firefox extensions. Maybe they are going to develope the fire fox extension version of enfra with the experience of current enfra beta release
No doubt this will be a powerful extention, privacy/copyright/waste-of-time issues aside. AllPeers is not the root of these problems, so why bash them? A tool to make file sharing easy direct from the browser? What’s not to like? Will it topple IE? Probably not but hell, it will make FF a “home” browser of choice, imho.
what do you think of the difference between allpeers.com , grouper.com and enfra.net ? i already know beinsync.com ,foldershare.com and mionet.com .
Diana (#83) – I don’t know yet…I haven’t been able to test allpeers yet but the promise is there. Grouper isn’t really a p2p application in the same way as allpeers (although I like Grouper a lot). Foldershare is good but really only for people you really trust, and you have to do some setup, and it won’t work on network drives (seriously limiting its usefullness). I have no idea what mionet is.
Similar (but scaled-back!) functionality is available at http://nearshare.net , which I am currently alpha testing. Nearshare is only for sharing files on your LAN, so it doesn’t serve all the same needs, but it beats emailing files locally or running around with a USB flash drive.
Works in firefox and ie on windows, firefox on linux. If you’re feeling adventurous, I could use more testers.
- Marty
woop-di-do. another buddy list and some sharing capabilities. Just like Microsofts ThirdSpace a while back, and promised for Live Messenger.
Nothing really new here, and needs yet another buddy sign-up. Look how well Jabber and Google Talk have done getting people to migrate from MSN and Yahoo buddy lists!
Nice that it brings together a bunch of different clients, but as a firefox bolt-on it’s not the killer app that’ll have people deserting IE – if they didn’t need Firefox up until now a new way to share snaps of their granny isn’t going to be the tipping point!
Sounds interesting. Looking forward to trialing it.
Although their web site has said “Coming Soon” for more than a year…
http://web.arch...//allpeers.com/