Jenneke E. Fokker

Personalization on a peer-to-peer television system

We introduce personalization on Tribler, a peer-to-peer (P2P) television system. Personalization allows users to browse programs much more efficiently according to their taste. It also enables to build social networks that can improve the performance of current P2P systems considerably, by increasing content availability, trust and the realization of proper incentives to exchange content. This paper presents a novel scheme, called BuddyCast, that builds such a social network for a user by exchanging user interest profiles using exploitation and exploration principles. Additionally, we show how the interest of a user in TV programs can be predicted from the zapping behavior by the introduced user-item relevance models, thereby avoiding the explicit rating of TV programs. Further, we present how the social network of a user can be used to realize a truly distributed recommendation of TV programs. Finally, we demonstrate a novel user interface for the personalized peer-to-peer television system that encompasses a personalized tag-based navigation to browse the available distributed content. The user interface also visualizes the social network of a user, thereby increasing community feeling which increases trust amongst users and within available content and creates incentives of to exchange content within the community.

Psychological backgrounds for inducing cooperation in peer-to-peer television

Television and the Internet have proven to be a popular combination for both broadcasters and viewers. Because of this popularity they are increasingly facing the consequences of central bottlenecks, which could be overcome by taking a different approach: Peer-to-Peer (P2P) technology. P2P systems can only be successful with as much cooperation among as many users as possible. We explain how this cooperation is hard to enforce, and how inducing it might be more successful. This paper lists relevant psychological backgrounds that can be used to induce this cooperation, along with possible applications for our system called Peer-to-Peer Television (P2P-TV).

Exploring the Acceptability of Delayed Reciprocity in Peer-to-Peer Networks

Using Peer-to-Peer (P2P) technology for distributing Television programs to many viewers simultaneously can only be successful if users cooperate voluntarily and massively. The current BitTorrent protocol only enforces instantaneous bandwidth exchange within the context of one video file. We explore ways to induce user cooperation flexible over time and over type of resources. Essential resources for a P2P system are: bandwidth, injections, moderations, and appreciations. Social exchange theory is taken as a background for addressing the inducement of cooperation in a P2P-TV system called Tribler. This theory helps to explain how the acceptability of delayed reciprocity can be influenced by the specificity of the exchangeable resources and by the relationship types between individuals. This paper presents the results from a study among 36 participants about the acceptability of delayed reciprocity in a P2P-TV system, under varying relationship types and specificity of exchangeable resources.

A questionnaire-based study on delayed reciprocity in a P2P-tv system

Using peer-to-peer (P2P) technology for distributing video files to many viewers simultaneously can only be successful if users cooperate voluntarily and massively. The current BitTorrent protocol enforces instantaneous bandwidth exchange within the context of one video file. To better exploit available resources for P2P-TV systems, such as our Tribler (www.tribler.org) software, we explore ways to induce user cooperation flexible over time and resources. The research is based on the social exchange theory and is done in two steps. First, the impact of social distance expressed in the degrees of separation (DoS) on the trust in reciprocity is investigated. Second, the DoS are combined with the kind of exchangeable resources typical for P2P-TV systems (i.e. injections and bandwidth) to find the influence of these variables on the accepted delay in reciprocity. The discussion will focus on the relation between trust in reciprocity and the accepted delay in reciprocity.