AllPeers, a p2p file-sharing Firefox extension, is now letting people share content when they are offline with their new Always On service. v0.60 of the product (just released) will let users send a link to content via an email. When files are shared via email they will be uploaded to AllPeers servers in an encrypted form and will only be accessible by that person. The AllPeers member gets 1GB of diskspace to share for free.
AllPeers is also releasing a bundled version of Firefox on its site. The Czech/UK company worked with Mozilla to create this new version (which is no different than if you install Firefox and then get the AllPeers extension). I thought that this wasn’t a very significant move until I found out that 10% of AllPeers traffic was being sent to get Firefox before being able to accept a file. Considering how viral file-sharing can be it is little surprise that Mozilla agreed to work with AllPeers; this is going to drive a lot of Firefox installs.
In the future you can expect AllPeers to get into a distributed social network. It will be complete with profiles, the ability to comment on files and will add to their existent IM feature. AllPeers is trying to perfect the sharing experience first before they delve into this area. P2p social networks with encryption may end up being very important in places where people try to hide some online actions from their government such as China. I wonder if adding some Tor-like functionality would be possible to supplement that.
Update: I would like to make it clear that this does not affect all Firefox installations. It is still quite possible for a person to get Firefox without Allpeers. It just makes it easier for the person who is getting Firefox only because they want Allpeers.