In the past, I built two of the world's largest YouTube to MP3 converters. In doing so, I learned the hard way 1) that distributing content at scale globally is painful and _expensive_ and 2) that I hate ads. So I built Arc.
It's a two-sided content exchange. On one side, websites buy a faster, 10x cheaper peer-to-peer CDN. On the other side, websites make money without ads by contributing bandwidth to the peer-to-peer CDN. Arc connects the two, like Airbnb connects guests and hosts.
As bandwidth capacity grows around the globe, we find ourselves in a world where people can share bandwidth both beneficially and imperceptibly. We see glimpses of that already today: Amazon shares bandwidth with Amazon Sidewalk, Microsoft shares bandwidth with Windows updates, etc. We build Arc for this world -- a post-adblock world -- to give sites a better, more ethical way to support themselves that doesn't bombard users with ads, suck up their personal data, and preserves their privacy.
- For sites that monetize with Arc, we mandate that Arc's widget remains visible and intractable in the lower left corner of your website so users can learn about Arc and, if they so desire, opt out. (See https://arc.io/faq#can-i-move-modify-or-hide-arcs-widget) Additionally, Arc never activates on cellular connections; Wi-Fi and ethernet only.
- If you elect to opt out (two clicks in Arc's widget), you're opted out of all sites with Arc.
Please email me if you'd like an invite code to take Arc's CDN for a spin: ansgar@arc.io. It's 10x cheaper than Fastly, AWS, Google, etc. (See http://arc.io/cdn/). And I'd love to hear your thoughts! Feedback is how good products become great.
I’m curious what your analysis of the equilibrium states of this model look like. I think it’s an interesting approach, but I’m not entirely convinced it’s sustainable.
In the past, I built two of the world's largest YouTube to MP3 converters. In doing so, I learned the hard way 1) that distributing content at scale globally is painful and _expensive_ and 2) that I hate ads. So I built Arc.
It's a two-sided content exchange. On one side, websites buy a faster, 10x cheaper peer-to-peer CDN. On the other side, websites make money without ads by contributing bandwidth to the peer-to-peer CDN. Arc connects the two, like Airbnb connects guests and hosts.
As bandwidth capacity grows around the globe, we find ourselves in a world where people can share bandwidth both beneficially and imperceptibly. We see glimpses of that already today: Amazon shares bandwidth with Amazon Sidewalk, Microsoft shares bandwidth with Windows updates, etc. We build Arc for this world -- a post-adblock world -- to give sites a better, more ethical way to support themselves that doesn't bombard users with ads, suck up their personal data, and preserves their privacy.
A few notes:
- For sites that use Arc's CDN, users do not use upload bandwidth and Arc's widget isn't displayed. It's just a faster, 10x cheaper CDN in one <script> tag. That's it. (See https://arc.io/faq#do-users-upload-content-with-just-the-cdn)
- For sites that monetize with Arc, we mandate that Arc's widget remains visible and intractable in the lower left corner of your website so users can learn about Arc and, if they so desire, opt out. (See https://arc.io/faq#can-i-move-modify-or-hide-arcs-widget) Additionally, Arc never activates on cellular connections; Wi-Fi and ethernet only.
- If you elect to opt out (two clicks in Arc's widget), you're opted out of all sites with Arc.
Please email me if you'd like an invite code to take Arc's CDN for a spin: ansgar@arc.io. It's 10x cheaper than Fastly, AWS, Google, etc. (See http://arc.io/cdn/). And I'd love to hear your thoughts! Feedback is how good products become great.