gnutella paid links and updates

I have often times raved about google’s adsense. It is hands down the best solution I have ever seen to online advertising, from both an advertiser’s perspective and a publisher’s point of view. Switching gears (hang on I’m getting somewhere), file sharing programs have historically struggled to generate revenue, walking the fine line between pissing off users (bundling spyware/adware) and generating no revenue (ad free versions). Some programs like LimeWire and BearShare offer an ad-free “pro” version for twenty bucks or so. So getting to that point I am getting to (I swear), a former LimeWire developer named Susheel Daswani has launched a new gnutella advertising program that delivers paid ads in response to gnutella queries, called Gnutelligence.

Basically the way this works is I am an advertiser that sells Britney Spears posters. I come to Susheel and buy the keyword “britney spears,” agreeing on some figure like forty cents a click or so. Then some user fires up his gnutella client and searches for britney. Susheel’s software then acts like it is returning a result from another client, but actually delivers a shortcut to the sponsor’s URL. The user thinks he is getting the new Britney but actually gets redirected to the advertiser’s Britney Spears posters page, and Susheel cashes a 40 cent check.

I commend his innovation, but I see a few problems here. First of all, Google’s Adsense is a boon because everyone makes money. Under Susheel’s system, only he (and potentially the advertiser) profits, and the entire network suffers. He can also go beyond delivering links to advertisers and straight to delivering DRM protected content a la KaZaA’a Altnet technology. There is also going to be a rash of copycats, as people rush to not be left off the bandwagon. My real concern is that he will be using gnutella users to pass along his ads without their knowledge. Susheel is also the owner of Gnoozle, a gnutella client. I don’t pretend to know how Susheel is planning on seeding the gnutella network with his ads, but it would be a fairly trivial feat of coding to get his Gnoozle client to keep a hash of his advertisers and their relevant keywords and deliver those in response to queries on the gnutella network. Meaning the ad you get in response to your Britney Spears query could be coming from the nearest peer running gnoozle. I state again, I do not know if that is how he is delivering his ads, I am just saying he could.

*yawn*

Haven’t blogged in a while, been pretty busy. Working on a bunch of new web projects, doing some consulting for Seamless P2P. Pretty cool technology, im+skype+email+darknet+encryption. Basically a lightweight custom p2p vpn. Sweeeet.

I REALLY want a new phone with a full keyboard and imap support. Any suggestions? I am looking @ the Nokia 9500, the sidekick 2, and the blackberry. Can’t decide.

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