BitTorrent Sync: this is huge (and it’s not about dropbox)

BitTorrent just released BitTorrent Sync, a p2p “dropbox alternative”. What it does, more or less, is sync folders between computers using the bittorrent protocol.

This is huge!

Obviously, it will replace dropbox for many users. It’s easy to have multiple folders and give to other users a read-only or a read-write key to sync with them. Example: use my key RNK7XXLW3LB4JSR7OP7LMKOTZLHEDRIRE to get read-only access to my test folder.

But it’s much bigger than this!

For example, I put an HTML page in my test folder. I could put my whole blog in there, and you could have the most updated version at all times. Or I could put small json files that represent status updates and you could have a client that reads them and constructs something like... twitter. And of course, I could have a movies file, or a music file and share my movies and music...

Wow. This is huge. I’ll have to play with it a bit, and write more about it.

-- Some more thougths...

OK. So my new “web space” may actually be one (or more) btsync folder. I’ll share with the world my read-only key, and they will be able to read, or get my content: status updates, blog posts, etc.

Think about it. Your next microblogging platform may be btsync. You’ll get read access to your friends folder containing small xml or json files for each status update, and your desktop client will put them together as a stream. And you’ll publish yours just by putting new status updates in your folder! (There was an OS X app that did this over dropbox, I can’t remember the name.)

And this btsync key, is... the new IP, right? Much like people had to know IPs back in the early days of the Internet. And someone will make one or more centralized registries, mapping btsync keys to human readable names. Host names? Space names? Someone will come up with a good term. And then, we will probably need something like a DNS :-)

-- one more update: It looks like this post is on the right track.

@vrypan gets it (perhaps the first to do so), initial steps toward the content-centric network with BitTorrent Sync http://blog.vrypan.net/2013/4/24/bittorrent-sync/ —Eric Klinker, CEO of BitTorent