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Skyrider Extends Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Leadership Role With Search Marketing Platform and Series C Round of Funding

New Search Marketing Service and $12 Million in Funds Further Positions Skyrider as P2P Networking Market Leader

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Skyrider, developer of a new peer-to-peer (P2P) networking platform, today announced continued market momentum with their P2P search marketing platform and a Series C round of funding. The new search marketing product is one of the first innovative P2P services based on Skyrider’s robust P2P networking platform designed to help bring web-like search marketing to P2P networks. The company also announced that it has secured $12 million in a Series C round of funding led by ComVentures. Previous investors Sequoia Capital and Charles River Venture Partners also participated in the current round, bringing the total amount of funding raised to $20 million. The new funding will allow Skyrider to continue to deliver on its vision of helping businesses reach their customers in a highly effective way, and providing consumers with the ability to publish, find, and share information.

“The newest round of funding is further testament to Skyrider’s value proposition: providing a sophisticated P2P infrastructure through which businesses and consumers can capitalize on the immense opportunity these networks offer. Our search marketing product is the first of many valuable services we plan to offer to help these communities,” said Skyrider Chief Executive Officer Ed Kozel. “P2P networks encounter as many searches per day as Google or Yahoo; and there’s a huge potential for advertisers to reach consumers on these networks. With our infrastructure and innovations like our search marketing product, we can help businesses connect with consumers by harnessing the power of online advertising and grow their businesses within a new untapped market.”

According to CacheLogic more than 60 percent of backbone Internet traffic and up to 90 percent of upstream traffic from users is now consumed by P2P applications. Skyrider’s new search marketing product can help businesses capitalize on this opportunity by placing targeted advertisements within P2P search results. Additionally, it gives users new access to reliable and exact search results.

“Skyrider’s product is providing an efficient and relevant brand promotion on P2P networks, ensuring high visibility and an ability to creatively reach some of our artists’ most dedicated listeners,” said Brent Muhle, General Manager, Nettwerk. “Not only can we target specifically within these searches to deliver music, but we can also offer other incentives and opportunities for our artists to connect to their fans.”

The strengths of the new search marketing product and future services lie in Skyrider’s infrastructure. The company’s systems are based on proprietary high performance network stacks backed by a large-scale distributed architecture for control and transaction processing, which enables Skyrider to embed its systems within the global fabric of P2P networks. The advantage of this architecture is that every node shares in the burden of storage and distribution of information, allowing millions of network nodes to interact and handle trillions of daily network-level transactions.

“Skyrider’s unique approach to P2P networking, extensive expertise in building complex IT architectures, and ability to roll-out innovative tools like the new search marketing product have us convinced that this company will be widely embraced both within the P2P community and by businesses seeking to reach that community,” said David Britts, Partner, ComVentures. “Skyrider’s vision and execution is much more scalable and cost-effective than the old client-server environments, and is ideally suited for supporting the sharing and distributing of vast numbers of large files such as commercial and user-generated audio and video content. This also makes it ideal to layer value-added products like search marketing to the networks. As such, Skyrider is providing an invaluable service to consumers and businesses leveraging P2P networks to connect with appropriate audiences and share relevant information.”

The Skyrider search marketing platform is available today. For additional information on Skyrider visit www.skyrider.com.

I see on the front page of the FT today the amazing story that Amazon is being sued by IBM for the alledged ‘unlicensed’ use of IBM patented techniques.

Whats amazing is that these techniques include such everyday things like:- “use of hypertext links to make recommendations to customers”- “methods for presenting and linking to online adverts”- “networking architecture for delivering online content faster”
WHAT HAS AMAZON DONE TO UPSET IBM!!!

Aren’t these some of the most basic features of the web, isnt it amazing that IBM should have patents on some of these (ok, so I don’t know the details of the claims, we could be talking something extra-special here), and isn’t it crazy that someone is being sued for using them. My guess is its a lot less to do with teh actual breahc of patents and much more to do with IBM trying to put pressure on Amazon to do something or other that IBM wants.

Crazy.

NICHE COMMUNITY SITES SET TO BE NEXT AREA OF GROWTH IN NETWORKING

Just as the US websites Ebay and Amazon have led the e-commerce charge, many of the leading social networking sites have also emanated from the US - leaving the UK trailing in their wake, writes Emiko Terazono.

“Americans have been the early adopters of the internet, so it’s natural that social networking was born there too,” says Alex Burmaster, internet analyst at Nielsen Netratings, the online measurement and research group.

Although the spotlight has been on large teenager sites like MySpace and Bebo, the focus is shifting to niche community sites, says Sam Sthi of TechCrunch, the technology blog. In the US and UK what you’re beginning to see are vertical networking sites like Queenspeech.com for gay people and Bottletalk.com for wine buffs.

By Emiko Terazono, Media Correspondent
Published: October 24 2006 03:00 Last updated: October 24 2006 03:00

By Emiko Terazono,Media CorrespondentPublished in the FT: October 24 2006 03:00 Last updated: October 24 2006 03:00

When Stephen Lambert, the creator of the television series Shipwrecked, urged wannabe TV stars to audition for the reality show earlier this year, he had no idea what he was starting. The chief creative officer of RDF Media, the television production group behind programmes such as Wife Swap and Supernanny, decided to create a website where they could sign up.

However, the internet site, Islandoo.com, created only last month, has taken on a life of its own. Thanks to the numbers of youngsters who have uploaded pictures and videos, the site has developed into a full-blown social networking site, with participants who heard of it through word of mouth messaging eachother and reacting to one another’s comments.

Since its launch it has garnered almost 18,000 profiles, 1.5m comments from users and almost 10m page views. While many television programmes have forums and chat rooms, very few have profiles of the users allowing the photo and video uploading and messaging that characterise the social networking phenomenon.

The result amounts to a new twist in the trend that has taken the world’s under-20s by storm - and one at which advertisers are already casting covetous eyes. The interest may soon extend across the Atlantic. RDF plans to export the show and website to the US.

Explaining the merits of Islandoo.com, Mr Lambert says: “With a chat room, there is mainly one public conversation with everybody. Here people get to know each other between themselves.”
Sam Sethi of TechCrunchUK, the technology blogging site, adds: “The site mixes the social network aspect of MySpace, instant messaging of MSN and YouTube videos in a single application.”

With a growing number of young people spending time on sites such as MySpace.com, Bebo.com and YouTube.com, the appeal for traditional media groups is not hard to understand. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp bought MySpace.com last year for $580m (£312m) and Google recently paid $1.65bn for YouTube.com.

Janet Goldsmith, co-managing director of Mediatique media consultancy, suggests that in future many other television broadcasters will seek to follow Shipwrecked’s example by creating website communities to ensure a buzz around a new show.

She says: “Technology has caught up with what people want to do, and it’s facilitating other worlds. Creating a community around a programme brand across other platforms is absolutely essential.”

RDF is currently talking to advertising agencies about how to cash in on the website. David Alberts, chairman of Grey London, acknowledges the possibility of putting up advertising on the site, but notes that the participants of Islandoo.com - products of a “pull” rather than a “push” culture - may not particularly warm to brands that simply upload their commercials.
He says: “What you’ve got is 18,000 people who are desperate to promote themselves, impress people and be outgoing. What we’re thinking about is actually using the site to encourage the entrants to make their own Nokia ad or their own Clover ad.”

Filming for Shipwrecked finishes in December. Mr Lambert wants to keep the website to use it to audition contenders for other programmes and maintain it as a possible source of user-generated content.

But keeping up the momentum of a social networking site is no easy task, and requires the owners and operators to invest money and energy to remain at the cutting edge in both technology applications and fickle user tastes.

Ynon Kreiz, general partner of Benchmark Capital, the venture capital group specialising in new media, notes: “In order to keep the sheer momentum and creativity, you have to retain, maintain and reinvent.”

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006

So if User Generated Content is about users generating content (surprise, surprise), why is social networking so important? Social Networking is pioneered by websites like (in no special order) MySpace, Bebo, Facebook, Classmates.com, and Friends Reunited (plus the fifty others you’ll find on Wikipedia). But I have a problem with these sites. I dunno, I just don’t get it. They all seem so… well… pointless. Now, I may be 37 and a little older than your average MySpace user, but I count myself as one whose finger is firmly on the pulse, and I just don’t get it, there’s something missing. That little thing called relevance.

OK so I can put up my profile, and say what I like or don’t like, and upload a few pictures of myself drunk or making a silly face. If other people like the way I look they can add me to their ‘friends’, but there lies the problem, they’re not my friends. Most of the MySpace profiles I’ve seen are a complete mess, with random people adding comments like “hey, love your pic” and other such nonsense. Many have illegible text on confusing backgrounds. Frankly it’s a mess. I can see how they grow users fast, the entertainment value is there, if very short-lived, and I wonder how many of the tens of millions of users are actually current.

So why are large media companies buying SN companies? Well, it’s about capturing and then leveraging that young user/community base. Witness MySpace’s purchase by Murdoch’s NewsCorp for $560m in 2005, Bebo’s (recently reported) declined $550 offer from BT two months ago, and Viacoms rumoured acquisition of Classmates.com. Remember what I said about the decentralization of media in a previous blog? The big media companies need to stay ahead of the curve and own a piece of the new market, otherwise they will lose out to new upstarts and new business models. Motives for purchases may vary: some seek to acquire communities which will primarily be leveraged to sell new services to, while others are picking acquisition targets which have some synergy with their current offerings. In truth the motives will be a combination of these and other factors.

What’s missing, as I said earlier is relevance, and this is where UGC and SN get married. After all what is conversation without context, and context without someone with which to discuss it?
I believe that SN offerings need to get wise to rich UGC capabilities, and UGC offerings need to beef up their social networking aspects. How much better when I can network with people and have relevant content to discuss, and when I have relevant content and can get more involved with its creator.

By Graham Stuart, Published in The ScotsmanIT SOUNDS like a tale from the dotcom boom and bust era. Technology giant buys a website that’s never made a penny of profit for an eyewatering sum which it is never likely to recoup. After Google paid $1.65bn (£883m) for the video sharing site YouTube last week, analysts have been wondering whether history is about to repeat itself.

While the California-based YouTube offers nothing unique in technology terms, it has one commodity which all online media companies covet: a mass audience.

more…

Preparing themselves for a torrent of users
(Original article published in Guardian Online 19th Oct 2006)
Ashwin Navin is president and chief executive of BitTorrent, whose peer-to-peer protocol transfers huge files efficiently across the net. He is leading its move onto a commercial footing by content deals.
Interview by Kate BulkleyThursday October 19, 2006 The Guardian

Technology Guardian: BitTorrent is considered by most content owners, including broadcasters and studios, as a scourge because it encourages the illegal sharing of content. How do you respond to that?Ashwin Navin: BitTorrent grew because people were using it to publish unlicensed TV shows and music and, big surprise, people like to download TV shows and movies and music, so now we’ve got 80 million people out there that have the software. The idea now is to convert this user base into paying customers. BitTorrent was never specifically designed for the purpose of stealing content, but it was designed to deliver content efficiently and if we can be a distributor of content using our tools we can be more efficient than all of our competitors. Hopefully that will mean more margin for the publishers and better quality for the consumer.
TG: That sounds good, but a lot of people would say peer-to-peer networks and content protection are oxymorons.

AN: Five years from now we will be laughing about that because every service online uses some kind of peer-to-peer delivery. As file sizes get richer and bigger, P2P is fundamentally the only way to deliver content on the internet without breaking the internet itself. BitTorrent doesn’t get in the way of content protection. It is actually a separate layer.

TG: This all sounds very rational and grown-up and is the future that you are trying to invent for BitTorrent, but when BitTorrent was founded in 2001 by Bram Cohen it was a very different story … it was more of a Napster, I mean the original Napster, of course.

AN: Actually from the day Bram founded BitTorrent it was a web-publishing tool and very controllable and distinct from other layers of service and technology that would be required to make it viable. Bram Cohen committed the grave crime of giving away this very powerful tool for free! Anyone would consider that a crime because he never benefited from its use. Now that we have got this large number of users on BitTorrrent we think there is huge commercial value in becoming a distributor of content.
Just to be clear, file sharing is one application of P2P. Napster, Grokster and Kazaa basically made a directory available to the public in exchange for everyone else’s directory. BitTorrent doesn’t work that way at all. BitTorrent uses P2P as a means to an end, so it is completely invisible to the user.

TG: You joined BitTorrrent in 2004, three years after Bram founded the company. You came into the company to create a business model, correct?

AN: Well, let’s just say that before I joined, Bram had a phenomenally successful T-shirt company. (The only way BitTorrent was getting money was through donations and selling T-shirts.) It took a certain amount of convincing to actually point him in the direction of a commercial entity.

TG: The judicial system in the US has taken a dim view of peer-to-peer networks - in fact, Grokster is out of business. Why is BitTorrent still around?

AN: If your technology looks like it was designed for illegal purposes, you’ll be held liable for it. It’s kind of like the pornography standard, I can’t define it but I know it when I see it and that is basically what the court handed down. From the beginning of BitTorrent, Bram vociferously discouraged the use of BitTorrent for piracy and warned users there is no anonymity.

TG: So now the plan is to license content and sell it, but what about monetising the traffic you have? You already have some advertising. How is that going?

AN: BitTorrent does have a lot of traffic and we make some money from advertising, but that’s not where we think we’ll be wildly profitable.

TG: So the wildly profitable part means you need to license content and so far you’ve signed a licensing deal with one studio, Warner Bros. But you haven’t actually started offering any paid-for content yet. Why’s that?

AN: What we want to show the world is that BitTorrent is the most efficient way to deliver content and there are attractive legal purposes for it. The second phase beyond that is to take the core component of the BitTorrent delivery system and make it available for a fee for anyone who has a website and wants to deliver content efficiently.

TG: And why is the Warner Bros deal the only one you’ve signed so far? Are you still proving the technology?

AN: We haven’t announced any other deals but we’ve been quite successful working with all the other studios.

TG: Apple has licensed TV shows such as Lost and Desperate Housewives on the iPod. There’s lots of other content on other sites, more each day. Why wait or is it a case of you not being able to get the deals you need?

AN: The idea is to get a comprehensive catalogue. We also want to offer high-quality, fast downloads so it is a good experience to discover not only major content, but also independently-created, high-quality content.

TG: So you are still working on the technology. Clearly a big part of that is the copyright protection software. How do you convince the Warner Bros of the world that you can protect their shows?

AN: There will never be a digital rights managment (DRM) system that works [universally]. It’s sort of like expecting a $75 door lock to protect all your valuables. Fundamentally you’ve got to get to a speed bump that works for 90% of the users. Ten per cent of the users may have the interest and time to break something that is available for sale for $1, but most people aren’t going to bother with that. At our launch we are using Windows DRM, which is the accepted standard today. We’re always looking for a standard that is independently created, cross-platform, and the studios are as well, especially when they see that Apple and Microsoft are starting to exert their control and lock in users.

TG: So what’s the solution to having Apple or Microsoft dictate terms?

AN: I think the next phase is about DRM-free. It will be like the watermarked approach, so that content is labelled as mine and the process of putting it up on a P2P network is not attractive because I paid for it and so others should probably pay for it, too. Do I want something with my name on it all over the web? No. So that can be a pretty effective form of copy protection.

TG: What is your view on the pricing for these kinds of offers? I mean, your 80 million users are getting this stuff for free now.

AN: One of the things that seems to be proven is that consumers need a consistent pricing framework. The pricing needs to be commensurate with the value proposition of getting a digital download and so we are learning from others. We are shaping that up.

TG: What about user generated content (UGC)? Will you encourage it and try to become YouTube 2?

AN: We care about the users who have created the content, not necessarily the people who have posted content that they haven’t created or which they don’t own. Right now we have a submission tool that allows people to submit content on an invite-only basis.

TG: So, controlled UGC. Sounds like you don’t see it as the future, which is interesting given that only a few days ago Google spent $1.6bn to buy YouTube.

AN: People use BitTorrent to post UGC to their own sites and then our webcrawler picks it up. So instead of allowing people to post to their own sites, we are going to allow them to post to our site as well and therefore we hope to have a better connection with the artists and the file sharers. One thing about BitTorrent is we are all users as well.
TG: And all under the age of 25, no doubt?

AN: Well, I think the average age of BitTorrent staff is 29. But we in a sense don’t need to do endless focus groups because we are the focus group!

original article

Here is an interesting article I found the other day….

==QUOTE==
Let’s face it shall we - no one creates something and then gives it away for free, expecting no return…
I mean, as much as we’d like to do stuff and give it away for free, in the interests of making the world a better place, the unfortunate reality is that we all have to earn our crust somehow, and if we throw our eggs into the user generated content basket, then you have to ask what the hell your revenue model is going to be?

For the uninitiated, user generated content (UGC for short) is basically where instead of creating valuable content yourself and then letting people read/consume it, you rely on your users to create that content for you. Two notable examples that have recently been acquired for absolutely stupendous amounts of money are MySpace and YouTube.

OK, so where do you start?Adsense - let’s just throw this out the window straight away. You can’t start and build a business from advertising revenue that relies on people clicking little text based adverts on your website. At least, you would have to be insane to do that.

Advertising - sounds like a good option. But to make that work, you have to do advertising deals or have an advertising network at the ready that will provide you with contextual advertising that still gives you a good enough cut, and/or you have to have so much traffic that your advertisers would be stupid not to consider your channel for their ad spend (but of course the problem here is that you don’t get really good huge amounts of traffic overnight); and/or you have to have contacts that can give you an inside track to advertising spend where your growing number of users and traffic is worthy of someone’s attention.

Either way, advertising revenue as a viable sustainable business model only works when you scale to a large enough user base to make the revenue model work.

Build it and they will come - is where you assume that whatever you are doing will grow big enough and quickly enough to attract the attention of your friendliest 800 pound gorilla on the block, so that they will acquire you and make the founders / shareholders richer than they were the day before. Here you’re making some big bets - some might say stupid bets…

Find value to offer, and make it cheap enough to afford and easy enough to scale - is the attitude where your core offering is free, but if the users want a value added “widget”, then they have to pay for it. So, you’re not pushing people away ‘cos your offering is paid for, but you’re saying to them that you can have this little piece extra, and it will cost you a dollar a day/week/month (or whatever). Most people probably won’t go for it, but chances are a smallish percentage of your user base will go for it. So your revenue model needs to be really conservative (not “if 10000000000000 people use this, we’ll be rich!!!”), where “relatively small number of users x low cost per widget” == “enough money to keep the lights on”.
The only problem is, what is that widget going to be?

So - where is the middle ground? How can you offer a service which is useful to your users, and still earn enough money to get it off the ground while not killing your credit rating and making enemies with your bank manager?

At the moment, I think it’s a mixture of advertising and widgets, probably with advertising dominating once you scale up to a large number of users. The question is how you grow initially to a large enough critical mass to make things work.

I don’t know the answers to this, but rest assured I’m going to ask my sub-conscious to think about what widgets make sense to users, and are easy enough to implement, while also trying to do some more reading on revenue models for user generated content.
==UNQUOTE==

David says See my comments…

Original article is here

I love the idea of User Generated Content websites. Its all the rage. Mainly this is because of the rapid decentralization of the media industry, with increasing power in the hands of the smaller publisher and even (or perhaps that’s especially) the individual. It’s a fundamental shift, every bit as important as the growth of the Internet itself: you don’t need a TV company, expensive studios, radio mast, printing presses, or high cost production facilities to gain people’s attention, and companies wishing to get their messages in front of consumers are noticing this.

I want it NOWBut it’s not just the advertisers that this is important to; the consumers themselves are demanding on-demand, real-time, give-it-to-me-now media and entertainment. Who will want to wait for the programming or production schedule of the large media companies to consume what they want to see? Not me. Not when I can get exactly what I want, when I want, online now.

Count me inBut there’s more, it’s not even all about immediacy of the content. There is also the important factor of consumer participation. We’ve seen it for decades in a limited form on TV, with quiz and game shows that pick contestants from the viewing audience. More recently TV production houses like Endemol made TV user created (if not generated) content into an art form with their smash hit Big Brother TV show, and worldwide Pop Idol franchise. Consumers want more choice, but they also want to contribute, furthermore they want their contribution to make a difference to the outcome of the production, hence the sky high numbers of phone and SMS votes recorded for these shows.

Consumers become the publishersWhat’s in it for the producers? Aside from simply moving with consumer tastes, producers have the opportunity to acquire content at dramatically lower costs, from a wider creative pool, that has more immediate meaning and relevance to their consumers.

Talk about win:win (or is that win:win:win?)

Tamago Launches Peer-to-Peer eCommerce System

Tamago launched peer-to-peer commerce system allowing people to sell every type of digital media directly from their computers to customers all over the world.

People who publish music, videos, photos, e-books, etc. earn royalties, while buyers earn commissions for distributing media to others.

San Francisco, CA, USA, October 16, 2006 — “We believe everyone should make money,” said Joel Floyd, CEO of Tamago. When someone buys a song, a picture, or other digital media, Tamago pays the members, whose computers deliver the data, directly to the buyer. This eliminates the need for central server farms. “In Tamago’s new world, customers are not just consumers, but distributors also,” said Gary Feierbach, COO of Tamago.

Tamago was built for both publisher and customer ease of use. When someone publishes their work they set the royalty amount they want to receive for each sale. In turn, buyers automatically become distributors and receive a commission on any media their own computer delivers. Tamago also protects an artists’ name and copyright by preventing it from being re-published and stolen, while giving customers freedom to use the material for any personal use. “This system will bring out the artist in everyone,” Joel enthuses. “We charge nothing to publish and it takes less than 5 minutes. All the barriers are gone so everything from the popular to the very esoteric can find an audience.

“Tamago requires a PC running Windows 2000 or XP or an Intel based Apple Computer running Parallels Desktop or Boot Camp from Apple Computer.About Tamago Inc.:Tamago’s innovative technology connects people around the world allowing them to buy, sell, and distribute digital media between each other. Founded in 2005 by Sony Music Executive Joel Floyd, Tamago today is the only Peer-to-Peer eCommerce market. Tamago’s technology provides publishing businesses of all sizes the chance to reach global markets using an ordinary computer, while involving and rewarding users in the distribution process. Tamago is headquartered in San Francisco.

For more information, visit www.tamago.us.Contact:Joel FloydTamagohttp://www.tamago.us/415-252-8861