Let's say I have a file that I want to transfer over the Internet. If it needs to be sent to one person, then you can do this by e-mail, skype, vibe or via a social network.

But for this, the file must be of a small computer size and must be sent personally, so to speak, from hand to hand. But this is not always convenient and not always suitable. Sometimes you need to send something bulky (more than a gigabyte). Or you need to provide access to information not to one person, but to a group of people whom you do not know personally. And, sometimes, you just want to load data somewhere, so that you can get it later at any time.

That's for all this, and there are sites called file hosting. There you can upload information from your computer for free and get it from there at any time. Or get a link that can be passed to other people or published somewhere (on your own or someone else's site, a page in social network etc.).

What is file sharing

A file sharing service is a special hosting for files, where anyone can upload data for free for storage, as well as exchange over the Internet.

There are such sites paid and free. But usually this is a kind of hybrid: you are given a certain amount (often quite impressive) for free use, but if you need more space, then this is already for money.

Now the name "file sharing" is not used so often. They are increasingly called by the buzzword "Cloud" or "Disk".

Verified free hosting

If you have mail on gmail.com, then you already have such a storage. To open it, you need to click on the button at the top right and select "Disk". If there is no mail on Google, you will have to register.

The rules are the same: if there is mail on Mail, then there is also a cloud. To access it, you need to click on the "Cloud" inscription at the top (on a blue strip). If there is no mail on mail.ru, then you will need to receive it by registering in the system.

Others. There are a whole bunch of others free hosting... But they are a little less popular and most of them are not that good. And there is no guarantee that some new service with a very attractive offer will work for a long time.

What is better not to use

There is a category of file hosting services that I would not recommend using in any form - do not upload or download anything there. These are sites with a lot of "yellow", and often openly fraudulent advertising.

Where can you face them... Download links from these services can often be found on different resources with something free: programs, books, and so on. Indeed, in addition to the fact that absolutely any data can be placed on them, they make it possible to earn money: for each download the person who posted this file, some little money drips.

How to use file hosting

The principle is simple: open your Internet drive and upload data there. Once downloaded, they will be stored there and can be downloaded from there at any time. Or open directly from disk.

And if a file needs to be transferred to another person or a group of people, then in the settings you can make it public. Then the system will issue a link to it, by which anyone can download it. And do whatever you want with this link: send it by mail, skype, vibe, publish it on the website or on a social network.

Usually, it is not difficult to deal with uploading and downloading - everything is intuitive. But, just in case, I wrote on this topic.

Earn 50 rubles in 5 minutes.

If we take this issue seriously, it turns out that making money through file sharing is beneficial only to the owners of resources and forums. Because these people have the ability to post a large number of download links. And accordingly, for those who do not have their own website, you need to discard this option, how to make money on file sharing on the Internet and try to do something simpler:

It is not enough to know what a file sharing service is - you need to be able to make money with it!

Read the latest website news:

If you have a small file, you can usually send it by email. But what if your file exceeds the allowed size for sending mail attachments? Now, of course, you can transfer such attachments via Skype, but if this is not possible, then there are special services called file sharing. The bottom line is that in a regular browser, opening such a service, download the file you need there, you are given a download link, you pass this link to the desired recipient, you can also by e-mail... After opening the link, the recipient can easily download your file. It is convenient, besides, some of these services are free, somewhere there are volume restrictions, but first things first. Let's take a look at what file hosting services are on the network.

Yandex Disk

If you already have mailbox in this system, it is enough to go to the "Disk" tab in your mail. If not, then open yandex.ru, next to the search box, click "More" and select "Disk". This service allows you to use up to 20 GB of space for free. If you need more, you have to pay. To add files to Yandex. Disk click on the yellow button "Upload" or on the dotted frame "Upload files".

We select the file we need, wait for it to load. If you need several files, click "download more". On the right when uploading a file, drag the switch to On. Copy the link.

You can select any file on your Yandex. Disk and enable access to the link, then copy it and send it to recipients. And you can also share the link on social networks.

Here, without registration, you can temporarily place your file, not exceeding 200 MB in size. Such a file will be stored for up to 7 days. For those who have a one-time file transfer, it is very convenient. When registering in the system, files are stored for up to 45 days, there is also paid services service. We select "Review", then "Download". Copy the link for transfer.

It is very convenient to transfer any file without registration. Free up to 100 GB. Files up to 5 GB are stored after downloading for 90 days, files over 5 GB are stored after downloading for 20 days. Click on the green box "Select file", download, get a link and send it to the addressee.

There are other file sharing services on the network, as well as cloud storage, which also allow you to exchange download links. But storages, they are not just exchangers, they store your files on their server. Let's say the famous Dropbox is a cloud storage. By the way, Yandex. Disk is also more related to storage, since files will be stored there after downloading until you delete them yourself. But since this resource is now very popular among users, in this article I decided to consider it. If you have questions about the article, you can ask them in the comments. Until next time.

The article tells about such a resource as a file hosting service. What is he like? What are file sharing services for and why are they being gradually replaced by torrent trackers?

The beginning of the computer age

Once upon a time, computers were an attribute only of research centers, they took up a lot of space, weighed hundreds of kilograms, and the computing power was simply ridiculous compared to the current ones. Fortunately, digital technologies have evolved and are developing by leaps and bounds, and nowadays almost everyone can afford a computer, both for work and for entertainment purposes. Naturally, with their popularization, the need for data transmission methods grew, be it a film, music or a program. Initially, floppy disks helped in this, and later laser disks and flash drives. But how to transfer the file if the recipient is very far away? This is what contributed to the development of such a thing as a resource for sharing files. But what is a file hosting service? How does it work and does it have a future? In this we will figure it out.

the Internet

Imagine that you have a file, be it a working document or something else, and you need to transfer it to another person. This can be done in different ways: on a disk, flash drive or memory card. But what if the recipient is very far away? In this case, the Internet comes to the rescue. Until relatively recently, many only dreamed of unlimited fast Internet access, but now this will surprise no one. So what is a file sharing service? This is an intermediate server, a storage of information, to which the user uploads something, and then gives the download link to the addressee. Simply put, it is a kind of digital "intermediary" that provides access to files via the Internet. To protect information, you can set a password, without which a third party will not download anything, as well as set the "life" of the information, after which it will be deleted. So now we know what a file sharing service is.

But why such a process is needed, if any file can be sent by means of an attachment to email, through some messenger and the same "Skype?" Not everyone, after all. All of them have a limit on the size of the sent document, and for the last two methods it is necessary for the addressee to confirm reception, otherwise the transmission will not take place. And with file hosting, everything is easier: you just need to send a link to the person, and he will decide when to download the information. But the purpose of such resources does not end there.

Multimedia

Most of these services were not originally created for a purely working transfer, their main purpose is a wide exchange of information. Simply put, users upload a huge amount of music, books, films and programs to these servers, and then share links. Various sites also resort to their help. For example, you have created a platform where reviews for various software are posted and you can download it. But all this takes up a lot of space, and it is much more profitable to place files on exchangers, and simply provide links to them on your resource.

Several major scandals were associated with such activities, which led to the closure of the international file sharing service EX.ua, since illegal digital content was distributed through it.

However, let's take a closer look at two such services, which are among the most popular in Russia and the post-Soviet space. They belong to the companies Yandex and Mail.ru.

File hosting "Yandex"

This service was one of the first to provide an opportunity convenient loading and sharing files, for access you only needed Account"Yandex". On the this moment service called "Yandex.Narod" is closed. There is no access to it. It was replaced by a new one - Yandex.Disk, and this is a full-fledged one. In fact, the previous capabilities in downloading and exchanging files remained, but a number of interesting and useful functions were added, and the main one is the synchronization of data on the work computer and information on the server ... So the new Yandex file hosting service is no worse than the previous one.

"Mail.ru"

A similar story happened with this company, there was a service called [email protected], but in connection with the transition, again, to the cloud technology, access to it was closed. However, if users have information there, they don't have to worry. She did not leave, and she can be transferred to the "cloud". The file hosting service Mail was very popular, as it automatically saved data that was too large to be sent as an attachment to an email.

The company also held several lucrative campaigns to attract users to the new "cloud" technology. Thus, all users were provided with 100 GB of disk space for free, and later, due to the exit of the service from the testing stage, even a whole terabyte. This is much more than competitors, where initially only 3-5 GB are provided, and you can only expand storage for money. So the Mail file hosting service enjoys well-deserved popularity.

check in

One aspect that has alienated users from file storage is registration. Since not everyone uses them on an ongoing basis, few people were willing to go through the boring registration process. In addition, many sites deliberately limited the download speed if the user is not logged in, or did not allow large data to be downloaded. Now you can distinguish My-Files.RU as a good file hosting service without registration.

Over time, most of these services began to introduce paid subscriptions, which allowed removing restrictions on speed, file types and their sizes. But today torrent trackers are gradually and confidently taking the lead. Most of them do not require registration, viewing ads, fees, and the speed is not limited by anything. So the ru-zone file hosting services are losing their audience. However, like all others.

File sharing, file hosting or file hosting is a service that provides users with a place for their files and constant access to these files from the World Wide Web, usually via the HTTP protocol. This service allows its users to conveniently "exchange" various files.

The user uploads a file to the file sharing server from a special page (most often from the main page of the service), and the file hosting service gives this user a permanent link to the uploaded file, which the user can publish in blogs and forums, send via e-mail or distribute via IM systems ... Any other user by clicking on the link received can download the file uploaded by the first user.

File sharing services make money mainly in the following two ways:

• By showing advertisements. Many file hosting services introduce some artificial pause after the user has requested a file before starting to download it. During this pause (approximately 45-120 seconds), various advertisements are shown to the user, and only then the file is given.
• The sale of so-called premium accounts. This is a tracing-paper from English: "premium account". For a few dollars a month, a user can buy an account for himself with the right to download files without delays and without ads. In addition, it receives some additional benefits that are not available to ordinary users, such as the ability to download files in multiple streams using resume.

Some file hosting services also have partnership programs to increase revenue and attract new premium users. The scheme for all such affiliate programs is approximately the same: a user registered in the affiliate program uploads his file to the server. This file is assigned a unique URL. Then the user tries to place links to his files on a large number of resources.

These are, as a rule, warez sites and forums, spam and ICQ mailings. For every thousand unique downloads of a file, the file hosting service pays money to this user. Income ranges from $ 1 to $ 7,500. This is the maximum that was seen on the ShareCash service. Moreover, the larger the file is in size, the more it "costs". For example, for 1000 downloads of a file with a size of 1-4 MB, the user receives $ 2, and for 1000 downloads of a file of 250 MB or more - $ 50.

The leaders of this file sharing market are Depositfiles, Hotfile, RapidShare, LetItBit and MegaUpload. There are many other well-known file hosting services. For example, the iFolder file-sharing service is extremely popular in the post-Soviet territory.

iFolder is one of the largest Russian file-sharing hosting services. Belongs to Agava company. According to a representative of this company, at the beginning of 2010 iFolder's revenue from advertising was about 200 thousand rubles a day. At the beginning of 2010, the service hosted about 1.5 terabytes of data, and about 30,000 files were uploaded every day.

Files stored on the service are written using its own file system and with a high degree of redundancy. At the beginning of 2010, more than seventy servers physically located at the sites of the Golden Telecom data center were used to provide file sharing services.

In 2010, a noticeable resonance among Russian Internet users was caused by the suspension of iFolder and the subsequent restoration of its work after the intervention of Dmitry Medvedev.

On March 17, 2010, as part of the operational-search activities to find child pornography posted on iFolder.ru, representatives of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs arrived at Golden Telecom and expressed a desire to seize all equipment for examination. The removal of the equipment was avoided, but the police turned off and sealed the servers of the iFolder project. On March 20, 2010, as a result of the intervention of President Dmitry Medvedev, iFolder resumed its work.