Keeping Up Appearances
Does anyone else wonder how long the current User Generated Content and Social Networking websites can continue to remain stable under the pressure of massively growing user bases and even more massively growing content?
When all user information and the users’ published content is uploaded to and resides on the providers’ servers there must be a point at which the speed of growth outstrips the speed with which they can rack up new server capacity, new storage space, and increased bandwidth.
Hardware, processing power, storage, and bandwidth are all becoming cheaper, so cost isn’t the real issue (although I do have certain views on conservation of our e-resources – more on that another time). Even so, the savvy investors are starting to question the spiraling overheads compared with the vague (or at least unproven business models) - YouTube is reportedly paying in the region of $1m a month for its bandwidth. No, the real issue, I’m afraid is something far more fundamental – just how fast can you rack up and deploy the additional capacity. I contest that there is a point where you can’t rack up the kit fast enough to keep up with the growing user-base and storage requirement.
Imagine a graph which shows you user numbers over time, overlaid with one displaying your resource demand over time - time is on the x-axis, and users and resources are on the y-axis. As time passes your user-base grows, and in classic web style that growth becomes exponential – so we have one curve on our graph, curving upward at an increasing gradient. Now consider that for every one user a certain volume of content is published and a certain volume of content is consumed. The line that describes the resource demand of all that content (and we’re talking resource-hungry audio, video, and images here) also climbs exponentially. YouTube is reported to be adding upwards of 70,000 video clips daily. So now we have a second curve above the first, also curving upwards at an increasing gradient. Now let’s add another line; the one that that describes our supply of resources (hardware, processing power, storage, rack space, etc). It also presumably moves upwards over time, but can it also maintain an exponential growth, sufficient to keep it above the resource demand? The answer is a clear “no”, at least not indefinitely. Even given unlimited financial resources, the limiting factor is the speed with which your humans can rack and commission new kit.
So, I think the current architecture of SN and UGC is flawed, perhaps tripped by its own success; and where does this leave us? Well, it’d be pointless me writing this if I didn’t propose at least one solution to the problem. Izimi (http://www.izimi.com/) is a new Social Networking and User Generated Content platform which is currently in Alpha and about to go Limited Beta Release (Beta 1 is set for August 4th 2006).
What’s hot about Izimi is not that it offers all the classic UGC and SN feature sets, or indeed that users earn cash for their participation, but how it does this. Izimi uses a true Peer to Peer architecture to distribute the load imposed by feature-rich UGC and SN across the P2P network, unlike the client/server approach taken by others. Why have to upload content to a central server, when it can reside on your own machine and be equally well found, consumed, and interacted with? So instead of becoming less efficient like the centralized offerings out there today, Izimi’s network becomes more efficient. So why’s that so important? Well, that depends upon who you are.
- For the user it means you’re participating in a network that won’t fail sometime later when you’re become really dependent upon it – oh yes, and you earn real hard cash from publishing your own and co-hosting others’ content which can’t be bad.
- For eSeekers (the Oxford based company behind Izimi) it means a much lower dependence upon massive computing power, so they get to devote more of their resources to keeping customers happy and developing cool new features.
- For investors it means potentially greater returns at their exit point, just as the entire world is questioning the stability of their existing centralized UGC and SN investments.
Izimi is definitely taking a stealthy approach, on its website Izimi is inviting users to its closed Beta Program which begins in August. You can get invited by emailing Izimi direct from the website. The Beta Program aims to establish the basic stability of Izimi’s IM (Instant Messaging), VoIP (Voice over IP), and File Transfer capabilities, while the SN and UGC features will follow before October in the Beta 2. One thing is for sure: Izimi’s investors will be watching keenly to confirm the wisdom of their initial investment – as I’m sure will others.