p2pnet.net News:- Ex-LimeWire software engineer Susheel Daswani says he wanted Gnutella to become the de facto peer to peer platform. So he launched Gnutelligence marketing service.

But it’s drawing a lot of flac because it lets advertisers target people on the Gnutella network.

p2pnet asked him what Gnutelligence is all about.

Like Linux, open standards allow for distributed innovation, says Daswani, who`s currently studying tech law at the University of California, Berkeley. We want to see the downloads and sales of our products and services grow, but ultimately our main goal is to advance Gnutella as THE peer to peer platform.

Our first step was to launch a file sharing client, Gnoozle, where we would be able to add new consumer driven features. At the same time, we talked to several companies who expressed interest in Gnutella. Through those discussions we realized that offering our ‘Sponsored Results’ service would benefit consumers and our partners.

Gnutelligence allows companies to “market directly to users of file sharing applications and when a business signs up for Sponsored Results, they supply keywords with relevant web links and/or files,” says Daswani.

When a LimeWire, Gnoozle, or other Gnutella client user performs searches, “if their search matches one of our partner’s keywords our server will send back a sponsored result,” he says. “Imagine looking for a song and finding out that there is a ring tone available for it. Results may look like the following: Song File 1, Song File 2, (Sponsored Result) Get a Ring-tone for Song File, Song File 4, Song File 5

By offering targeted, relevant sponsored results, we are providing more choices to the end user in response to their search. That makes the user’s peer to peer experience better.

Does Gnutelligence mean people searching for files will suddenly be spammed with loads of ads?

No, says Daswani. First off, the ability to spam Gnutella has always existed because Gnutella, like HTTP, is an open protocol. Anyone can program to an open interface. Whether or not Gnutelligence exists, spam on Gnutella is a reality.

Most users of Gnutella have seen spammy results. So the introduction of our Sponsored Results service has no effect on the amount of spam – that is up to the spammers out there. Open protocols have costs and benefits – spam is one of those costs. We can deal with spam using technical measures, but we shouldn’t regress from the ideal of open standards and protocols since the benefits greatly outweigh the costs.

But aren`t Sponsored Results a form of spam?

“No,” says Daswani vehemently. Similar to Google Adwords or Overtures sponsored ads, the results a user gets back are highly relevant to the user’s search. Moreover, like sponsored ads, it is easy to spot a sponsored result. Our sponsored results are very clear about their content – they are not fake files or mislabeled results.

“We don’t believe in a ‘bait and switch’ strategy. If the user is interested in the sponsored result, they click on the file. If not, they don`t. If they do click on a sponsored result, either a web browser window will connect to the business sponsoring the result or the Sponsored File will be downloaded. Like Google and Overture, we audit our partners to ensure their ads are legitimate and relevant.

There you go.

Stay tuned.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 28th, 2005 at 3:45 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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