Companies could be throwing money into a black hole in peer to peer lending.
So how does a small business know when to make the leap from peer-to-peer to server?
Until recently, Big White Wall members were content with a peer to peer network of support.
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Much pornographic content may simply have shifted from the web to peer-to-peer file-sharing networks, for example.
The best method of accruing wealth, however, is to utilize the peer-to-peer marketplace to sell virtual items.
He adds that other firms hoping to create peer-to-peer lending businesses have given up after similar warnings.
But it soon found that it could save more money by using peer-to-peer nets to deliver its bits.
"We think there are huge ramifications in the business arena in terms of peer to peer networking, " he said.
And then there the peer to peer apps that gave firewalls nervous breakdowns.
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The company, Scour.com, was like Napster, a peer-to-peer search engine to find music and other content on the Web.
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In late 2007, for instance, word got out that Comcast was blocking or delaying peer-to-peer traffic to cut its costs.
Similar to peer-to-peer financing site Lending Club, Mosaic puts the burden on investors to assess the risks in project prospectuses.
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Shadow banking is also peer to peer lending, companies lending to each other, unregulated by the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC).
The top five tools that businesses used in 2007 were Peer to peer sharing, Social networking, Podcasts, Blogs, and RSS feeds.
These sites operate in a gray area of the law, facilitating "peer to peer connection" for individuals who want to exchange files.
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Because it is peer to peer and uses an encryption scheme it is very hard to write a simple rule for blocking it.
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Anthony North Hospital outside of Denver, human resources director Robert Archibold says most of the bullying incidents he sees are peer to peer.
Prosper Marketplace is in a similar business, offering a kind of peer to peer lending system, attracting a range of borrowers including the underbanked.
He also likes the fact that during 2008 and 2009, when the financial system was severely tested, peer-to-peer lending held up to the stress.
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BitTorrent Sync uses peer-to-peer technology to send information between users' PCs.
If millions of people send just a little bit back to the grid, peer-to-peer just like we send information on the internet, that's distributed power.
Ethernet is a democratic type of network: computers communicate peer to peer with no central control, and the technical standard became open, managed by the IEEE.
At the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, staff are using interactive lectures, field learning and peer-to-peer to sessions as a way of enhancing their course offerings.
Fueled by the rise of easily accessible digital media tools, we noticed tremendous experimentation going on around the world in the peer to peer space this year.
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The top five in 2010 are Social networking, Wikis, Peer to peer sharing, Video sharing and then a three way tie between tagging, RSS feeds and Microblogging.
Getaround is also working with the Oregon Transportation Research and Education Consortium to research peer-to-peer car-sharing with the aim of a wider nationwide roll-out.
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The IBM Executive School became an exercise in educational mayhem and controlled chaos where the bulk of the learning came through the osmosis of peer to peer interaction.
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For a small business to jump to a server system, the peer-to-peer environment had to be so unproductive that the pain had to be worse than the conversion challenges.
Managers can rate employees on their projects and help employees have a better view and more control over their careers, with online access to other staff for peer-to-peer learning.
In late 2007, for instance, word got out that Comcast (nasdaq: CMCSA - news - people ) was blocking or delaying peer-to-peer traffic to cut its costs.
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