Wirehog was a

friend-to-friend A friend-to-friend (or F2F) computer network is a type of peer-to-peer network in which users only make direct connections with people they know. Passwords or digital signatures can be used for authentication. Unlike other kinds of private P2P ...

file sharing File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digital media, such as computer programs, multimedia (audio, images and video), documents or electronic books. Common methods of storage, transmission and dispersion include r ...

program that was linked to

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...

and allowed people to transfer files directly between computers.

History

Wirehog was created by

Andrew McCollum Andrew McCollum (born September 4, 1983) is an American angel investor and businessman. McCollum is a co-founder of Facebook and current CEO of Philo. Education He attended Harvard University with co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and others on the f ...

, Mark Zuckerberg,

Adam D'Angelo Adam D'Angelo (born August 21, 1984) is an Americans, American internet entrepreneur. He is best known as the co-founder and CEO of Quora, based in Mountain View, California. He was chief technology officer of Facebook, and also served as its vic ...

, and

Sean Parker Sean Parker (born December 3, 1979) is an American entrepreneur and philanthropist, most notable for co-founding the file-sharing computer service Napster, and serving as the first president of the social networking website Facebook. He also ...

during their development of the

social networking website in

Palo Alto Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was es ...

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 were not registered on Facebook. Wirehog was launched in October 2004, and taken down in January 2006. Its target audience at the time was the same as the campus-only file-sharing service

i2hub i2hub was a peer-to-peer file sharing service and program designed and intended primarily for use by university and college students. History The program was created by Wayne Chang, a student at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. i2hub used ...

that had launched earlier that year. i2hub was gaining a lot of traction and growing rapidly. In an interview with ''

The Harvard Crimson ''The Harvard Crimson'' is the student newspaper of Harvard University and was founded in 1873. Run entirely by Harvard College undergraduates, it served for many years as the only daily newspaper in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Beginning in the f ...

'', Zuckerberg said, "I think Wirehog will probably spread in the same way that thefacebook did." The software was described by its creators as "an HTTP file transfer system using dynamic DNS and NAT traversal to make your personal computer addressable, routable and easily accessible". The client allowed users to both access data stored on their home computer from a remote location and let friends exchange files between each other's computers. In ways, Wirehog was a project comparable to Alex Pankratov's Hamachi

VPN A virtual private network (VPN) extends a private network across a public network and enables users to send and receive data across shared or public networks as if their computing devices were directly connected to the private network. The be ...

, the open-source OneSwarm

private network In Internet networking, a private network is a computer network that uses a private address space of IP addresses. These addresses are commonly used for local area networks (LANs) in residential, office, and enterprise environments. Both the IP ...

, or the

darknet A dark net or darknet is an overlay network within the Internet that can only be accessed with specific software, configurations, or authorization, and often uses a unique customized communication protocol. Two typical darknet types are social ne ...

RetroShare Retroshare is a free and open-source peer-to-peer communication and file sharing app based on a friend-to-friend network built by GNU Privacy Guard (GPG). Optionally, peers may exchange certificates and IP addresses to their friends and vice ...

software. Until at least July 2005, Facebook officially endorsed the p2p client, saying on their website:

"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."

The Wirehog software was written in

Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (pro ...

and was available for Microsoft Windows and

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...

only. A

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

version had been promised on the service's website. The service ran a custom-written HTTP server, 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.

References

External links

Wirehog
defunct

- TechNewsWorld article
History of Wirehog
- Harvard Crimson {{Facebook navbox File sharing networks Meta Platforms applications Computer-related introductions in 2004

History

See also

References

External links