Napster turns your Internet connection into the ultimate online jukebox, with millions of songs to choose from (Napster International. 2011). Shawn Fanning invented this technology whist attending Northeastern University in Boston. However, it was not done initially by himself with his uncle John Fanning being along side him every step of the way. Whether Sean Parker was a co-founder or early employee is an entirely other question. One thing for certain though and is that Sean Parker was a big part of the making of Napster. Initially, it was pictured as an independent peer-to-peer file sharing service mainly focusing on free online music. The service was first started up in June 1999 and ended in July 2001 for legal reasons (Harbour, A. 2001).
Before Napster was invented there were already networks that assisted with sharing files over the Internet, such as Hotline. Despite this, Napster is unique due to it specialising exclusively in MP3 music files and offered a user-friendly interface. At its peak there were 25 million users and 80 million songs, but the system never once crashed. Although the original Napster had to shut down for legal reasons it did lead the way for other such services like frost wire.
Like Napster, Facebook will soon run its course as the ‘cool thing’ of its time and be over taken by another company. What will overtake it is a totally different question.
Bibliography
Harbour, A. (2001). Napster faces copyright charges. Computer fraud & security. 1 (11), p.2
Napster International . (2011). Learn More. Available: http://music.napster.com/napsterhome/videos.htm. Last accessed 24th Aug 2011
No comments:
Post a Comment