Unleashing the Power of WORD-OF- MOUTH.

Can peer-to-peer technology boost site traffic, enhance customer relationships and create a greater online experience?

NAPSTER NAYSAYERS TAKE HEED: LIKE IT OR NOT, THE music-file-sharing maverick may go away, but its legacy is going to change the whole Web experience for everyone.

"You've been able to e-mail an MP3 file to a friend for many years, but it wasn't until Napster allowed you to exchange MP3 files with people you didn't even know existed that peer-to-peer became a compelling technology," says Jeff DeBalko, president, IDG Global Communications, the technology provider for International Data Group. "The publishing model is changing. Originally, everybody thought publishing is just moving online--and that's the big change. That's not the big change."

It's too soon to tell if peer-to-peer (P2P) will be the Internet elixir publishers are hoping for. It must overcome security and bandwidth issues to really be considered a viable business technology. But as a way to foster community in the loose sense of the technological definition, it's already catching on.

DeBalko believes that the most successful interaction in any business is the personal, one-on-one relationship, whether it's at conferences, seminars or meetings. "Taking that successful model for peer interaction and applying technology to it is what's going to drive success with online communities," he says.

P2P technology can be defined simply as two people with similar interests communicating, says DeBalko. E-mail, chat rooms, discussion groups and all sorts of Web interactivity can be understood as P2P applications. "The concept of community, of connecting people to resources, information, knowledge and education, is really where the publishing model is going," DeBalko says. "The server-centric model is very limited because people have to interact in a certain way. Rules have to be set centrally and content has to be made available centrally. People exchange information in different places and different ways, in different groups with different dynamics. P2P allows you to replicate that on the Web."

Many magazine publishers have been employing various kinds of P2P features on their sites for years, and noticing significant benefits, such as increased site traffic. "One of the great advantages that the Web offers is this immediate peer-to-peer contact in a way that you just don't have with a magazine subscriber and a news-stand buyer. They're pretty remote people," says Deidre Depke, a senior editor at Newsweek and editor of the magazine's Web site. "Web readers become involved with Web sites. Interactivity the P2P stuff, makes you feel more a part of the product and only increases the allegiance that the users have for the site itself--and the chance that they'll become regular readers."

Media Metrix reports that msnbc.com had 9.9 million unique visitors in April. The Newsweek site, Newsweek.msnbc.com, gets about 12 percent of the total msnbc.com audience.

The interactive features on the Newsweek site include polls, live votes, chats and its main attraction, "Live Talk," a weekly feature connecting readers to the writers and reporters of the main stories in the current newsstand issue. In addition to boosting traffic, the interactive features are used by Newsweek to gauge public interest in certain topics that can drive the editorial direction of the magazine, Depke says. "I get a lot of questions every week from editors and reporters who ask what kind of reaction a story got," she says. "When we're trying to figure out if this is a good story versus that, or trying to gauge interest out there, it's a really good resource for a magazine."

Hispanic Magazine also offers its Web users various interactive features, from chats to personals, all to foster a sense of community, says Paul Garcia, Webmaster for HispanicMagazine.com and its main portal, HispanicOnline.com. "The dot-coms are just headed out and more community sites are what's coming in," Garcia says. "More peer-to-peer sites, that's definitely the future. It appeals to me and to most of our users, from what I've seen. If you're Hispanic, like our users, for example, and you want more of a sense of what's going on in the Hispanic community, you can talk, ask questions and have discussions among the Hispanic community. That's very important. That builds a community. And that's where the future's heading."

Some Web sites that employ interactivity are reluctant to characterize their technology as P2P. MaximOnline, the Web site for Maxim, offers polls and live chats, but is only in the research stage of how best to approach P2P, says Roger Munford, the general manager of MaximOnline. "Magazine companies should be considering ways to enhance networking communities while further understanding the ramifications of information sharing," he says. "We recognize that this is a technology that will enhance the interactivity of our site and create a tighter community on the site."

For publishers looking to enhance their Web sites and foster online communities, there are several options for implementing P2P solutions. There are many scalable software solutions and hosts available. And, because P2P doesn't require the creation of a new infrastructure or the purchase of new hardware systems, costs can be contained. Newsweek, for example, uses the P2P technology of sister publication the Washington Post to provide a secure environment for its chats. And HispanicOnline initially chose an ASP to provide its interactive features, from e-mail to chats, to save money and capitalize on outside expertise. The media company is currently building its own platform to provide a more powerful chat feature, Garcia says.

IDG, itself a large, globally distributed enterprise, is following one of the P2P leaders, Ray Ozzie, the creator of Lotus Notes, and the development of his latest technology, Groove Networks. Groove is a software platform designed to host a variety of peer computing applications and business solutions via the Internet, without the need for a central server, in real-time. IDG plans to deploy Groove technology for its customer-focused Intranet technology by the end of this year, as a business application. IDG will employ the pure P2P technology on the content and editorial side of its external Web sites in 2002, DeBalko says.

Some analysts predict that, because of bandwidth, security and workflow problems, true P2P technology will not become a widely used business application until 2003. Despite the uncertainty, IDG is "very serious" about its P2P investment, DeBalko says. "If successfully deployed it will provide tremendous value for our company and our customers."

THE EVOLUTION OF P2P

1992 MP3 Technology Created

[greater than][greater than] MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 is a format for compressing data. The efficiency of Germany's Fraunhofer Institute's MP3 files sets off the music-file-sharing craze--although it was not the first technology to compress music files.

1997 MP3.com Emerges

1999 P2P Goes Mainstream

[greater than][greater than] Napster is unleashed upon the Web.

[greater than][greater than] The Rio portable MP3 player debuts.

[greater than][greater than] Eighteen record companies, working through the Recording Industry Association of America, sue Napster for copyright infringement 

2000 P2P Product Launches and Alliances

[greater than][greater than] Napster joins forces with music giant Bertelsmann.

[greater than][greater than] Gnutella, an Internet file-sharing program without a Web site hub, is created in March by programmers from AOL subsidiary Nullsoft.

2001 Napster Flounders but P2P's Growth Spurt Continues

[greater than][greater than] A court injunction forces Napster to eliminate all copyright material from its system.

[greater than][greater than] Ray Ozzie, one of the creators of Lotus Notes and founder of Groove Networks, launches Groove 1.0 Client software for enterprise P2P applications.

[greater than][greater than] The major technology players, including IBM, Sun Microsystems, Intel and Microsoft, have announced P2P initiatives, elevating the technology beyond media-file sharing. Smaller P2P ASPs spring up.