Wirehog
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wirehog was an innovative peer-to-peer file sharing program that was linked to Facebook and allowed people to transfer files directly between computers. It was created by Andrew McCollum with help from Mark Zuckerberg, Adam D'Angelo and Sean Parker during their development of The Facebook social networking website in Palo Alto in the summer and fall of 2004. The only way to join Wirehog was through an invitation from a member and although it was originally planned as an integrated feature of Facebook, it could also be used by friends who weren't registered on Facebook. Wirehog was originally launched in beta late in 2004 but has since been taken down.
Until at least March 2005, Facebook officially endorsed the p2p client, saying on their site "Wirehog is a social application that lets friends exchange files of any type with each other over the web. Facebook and Wirehog are integrated so that Wirehog knows who your friends are in order to make sure that only people in your network can see your files. Facebook certifies that it is okay to enter your facebook email address and password into Wirehog for the purposes of this integration."
Wirehog has been suspended and one of its uses on Facebook, sharing photos, has been superseded by the introduction of photo-sharing into the Facebook itself.
The Wirehog software was written in Python and was available for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X only. A Linux version had been promised on the service's website. The service ran an HTTP server based on Zope, and file downloading and photo viewing was through the web browser, with requested authentication by Wirehog's central servers to allow users to set up custom privacy settings.
[edit] External links
- Wirehog
- Wirehog P2P Melds Social Networks and File-Sharing - TechNewsWorld article
- Thefacebook.com releases peer file-sharing network - Brown Daily Herald
