As more internet entrepreneurs construct their businesses out of the contributions of users, questions are being raised about compensation. If Flickr\u2019s making money selling ads beside your photos, should you get a cut? If Google\u2019s search engine gets smarter by spying on your clicks, does the company owe you a tiny slice of its riches? The short answer to such questions is: Dream on, pal.<\/p>\n
But when a company\u2019s service involves peer-to-peer networking, the question of compensation becomes something more than a cause for philosophical rumination. In the European edition of the Wall Street Journal yesterday, Bruno Giussani had an interesting op-ed<\/a> that described how Skype routinely commandeers users\u2019 computers and network bandwidth to run its popular phone service. This is, of course, how peer-to-peer works, and if it were just a matter of every user making a little contribution in return for free or cheap calls it wouldn\u2019t be an issue. But, as Giussani explains, that\u2019s not what happens. Skype turns the computers of a relatively small number of users (estimated to be about 20,000 at any given time) into \u201csupernodes\u201d that consume \u201ccomputer power and bandwidth at an amazing rate.\u201d He quotes a Computerworld article that found that supernodes could \u201csaturate 100 Mbit\/second connections.\u201d (Paul Kedrosky, on his blog, recently described<\/a> what happened when his computer apparently became a Skype supernode.)<\/p>\n It’s a very nice set-up for Skype. By building its network on users’ machines and pipes, it’s able to “avoid massive investments and add new users at near-zero marginal cost,\u201d Giussani writes. And in the past, its free-riding business model didn\u2019t meet with much resistance. As a renegade operation \u2013 the Kazaa of telephony \u2013 Skype had an emotional connection with users that turned them into willing collaborators. But now that it’s an arm of a multi-billion-dollar profit-making company, eBay, one wonders if users will continue to happily make charitable contributions of processing power and bandwidth. Already, corporations are banning Skype from their networks.<\/p>\n Giussani foresees potential challenges for Skype. First, \u201csince most people pay for their bandwidth, some of them may ask Skype to share the cost.\u201d Second, user complaints (and further network expansion) may force Skype \u201cto start deploying its own supernodes.\u201d That kind of capital investment, Giussani ominously concludes, \u201cwould completely transform its business model.\u201d Free rides are great while they last, but they rarely last forever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As more internet entrepreneurs construct their businesses out of the contributions of users, questions are being raised about compensation. If Flickr\u2019s making money selling ads beside your photos, should you get a cut? If Google\u2019s search engine gets smarter by spying on your clicks, does the company owe you a tiny slice of its riches? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}