January 22, 2004 | Category:

Magnet Links

The makers of Kazaa have created a new uri scheme to help make P2P files easily retrievable from a web link. Called Magnet Links, the scheme is supported by Kazaa (2.6 and up) and various Gnutella clients (including limewire). While this idea has been done before (poorly), this particular iteration is an open freely implementable standard.

This is definitely a good thing, bridging the gap between the web and the file sharing networks.

Interestingly, they specifically mention bloggers on their site. They’re probably hoping to use us as meme propagation. And it’ll work. It’s a great idea, and could save bloggers bandwidth. Got a big file to give to your readers? Shove it onto a network and magnet link to it. We will be watching it closely.