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Lightshare – P2P Selling

With P2P technology hooking all these people together, it’s a natural to want to enable them to buy and sell things. Lightshare enables eCommerce on P2P networks, allowing users to directly negotiate, buy, and sell without intermediaries and without the hassle of setting up a Web storefront or auction. The company initially has its sights set on eBay and others who charge a fee for facilitating person-to-person transactions. Another objective is to allow owners of digital content to sell it online. However, the company plans on taking a percentage of each transaction, so users may just be substituting one middleman for another.

 

Lightshare’s application does offer more control to the seller, who hosts the item information on his or her computer. This enables the seller to adjust price, description, or terms quickly and easily.

 

Customers describe the items they want to sell by filling out a Web form, which, when completed, results in a file being saved on their computer. Prospective buyers can initiate a P2P search or go to Lightshare’s Web site and do a search. Instead of searching a static index of items, with fixed terms and asking prices like on eBay, however, the searches are conducted P2P, in real-time, scouring the participating users’ machines for matches The results contain the matching items and the seller’s user name. The buyer contacts the seller, and when they reach an agreement, they consummate the transaction using Lightshare’s transaction services.

 

Despite the fact that users can get fresher listings than on eBay, it’s hard to see the appeal of services like Lightshare for buyers. For sellers, the increased control over the item listing may make it worthwhile. As with all eCommerce efforts, liquidity, the availability of buyers and sellers on the marketplace, will determine whether this type of eCommerce service will thrive.

 

There's more on other P2P companies and their applications in Part 2 of CTOMentor's peer-to-peer white paper: Peer-to-Peer Computing and Business Networks: More Than Meets the Ear, Part 2 – How Are Businesses Using P2P? Part 2 is available at MindCrossing for a fee of $50. Part 1 - What is P2P? is available for free at CTOMentor.

 


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