The demise of the Grouper Client
The Grouper client for private P2P file sharing is being discontinued at this time. We appreciate the loyalty of our Grouper members and hope you’ll find lots of reasons to stick with us as we create new ways to watch and share video on the Web. In the meantime, while we design a new version of a Grouper client, please continue to enjoy watching videos, uploading clips, posting to your blog/social networking profile pages. You can use your webcam to make video comments and video shoutouts at Grouper.com. You can also enjoy Grouper video with our Screen Saver from http://grouper.com/toys/ Please drop by our forums for more info: http://forums.grouper.com
The official date when the client will no longer run is Monday, December 18th.
Feel free to leave a comment……
Explore posts in the same categories: blogs, forums, Grouper Central, Grouper Support, Release Notes, tEchNology, video sharing
Grouper Networks Blog 
December 15, 2006 at 5:55 pm
P2P file sharing was my only reason for being a member of Grouper. Sorry that our relationship has come to an end.
December 18, 2006 at 3:48 pm
I am sorry that Grouper has come to an end…
December 18, 2006 at 3:50 pm
yes, it’s a sad day for many of us. Grouper has been an excellent and fun too and an everyday part of my life to 2+ years.
December 18, 2006 at 6:13 pm
THERE IS AN ALTERNATIVE!!!
http://www.onshare.com/en_gb/findoutmore/
December 22, 2006 at 4:30 am
I am so sorry that Grouper has closed down. I was with it from almost the beginning. It won’t come anywhere close to You Tube with the video thing, so I’m pretty sure that this is the end for Grouper. I’ll miss it and the friends I made. RIP, Grouper.
Also, does anyone know of an alternative to Grouper? I enjoyed the ease of use and community aspect of Grouper and would like to find another way to connect with my friends.
December 26, 2006 at 5:57 am
Similar to Grouper is GigaTribe, which also lets you share specific folders on your computer with friends/family…and it’s free.
Basically, you build a private network of friends and/or family and/or co-workers and allow them access to specific folders (and therefore files) on your computer which you’ve chosen to share. You can even use GigaTribe to access your computer from a remote location (work, etc…). It’s 100% safe (128-bit blowfish encryption), you can transfer huge files (no-limit!) and it’s easy to set up. For more info or to download GigaTribe (remember, it’s free!), go to http://www.gigatribe.com.
December 29, 2006 at 6:16 pm
Only one reason me and so many of us stic to Grouper was P2P. Nothing else.
December 29, 2006 at 7:07 pm
It’s a shame there weren’t more of you with the passion shown by comments in this blog.
December 29, 2006 at 7:09 pm
The numbers just didn’t work out. A few thousand everyday users v. hundreds of thousands/millions of visitors to the Web site to view and upload videos only leads one direction in building a business.
December 29, 2006 at 7:10 pm
And yes, GigiTribe looks like a nearly identical (except for the fees they charge — basic service is lacking a few essentials) service.
January 2, 2007 at 2:44 pm
One close alternative is Qnext. It has most of the features of Grouper, although it isn’t as pretty. Only issue is that it requires port forwarding or at least one person in your private ‘net’ acting as a proxy.
It’s worth a look, and has been lauded by PC magazine, among others.
–MG!
January 2, 2007 at 2:51 pm
That’s a little overly complex on Qnext’s end. Port forwarding always enhanced a Grouper user’s connectivity experience and download speed but it wasn’t necessary that anyone currently connected had their ports forwarded. We had a master server to play that role. I HAVE heard good things about Qnext, though.
January 6, 2007 at 1:33 pm
To all the people who had their ‘private’ non-commercial videos deleted from Grouper, because they were ‘alleged’ to contain copyright music, you may want to check out Multiply.com
Share videos and music with your friends and family, in private. Create and manage groups and communities, no client software required, that you can control – http://www.multiply.com
January 6, 2007 at 1:51 pm
It’s not an alleged. Audible Magic runs the first thirty seconds of the audio track against waveforms in their archive of copyright protected content. A match is a match, not guesswork.
January 6, 2007 at 4:42 pm
Here is the use of ‘alleged’, taken verbatim from Grouper’s email to users — sent after a video was auto-deleted with the help of Audible Magic. Apparently, it’s not always accurate, since there is a process to dispute video content that was deleted in error, then have it reposted on Grouper.
“Please Note: Repeat incidents of uploading material alleged to infringe a copyright will result, at our discretion, in the deactivation of your account and all videos uploaded to that account. In order to avoid this, please delete any video to which you do not own the right, and refrain from uploading additional videos that infringe on the copyrights of others. For more information about Grouper copyright policy, please read section (3) of our Terms of Service agreement (TOS). http://grouper.com/tos/“
January 7, 2007 at 5:57 am
Fair enough. What the dispute process is for, is s people who may have a license to use the video, or are the musical content creators themselves. we of course will restore those videos asap. However the waveform match up is totally accurate. An audio track on a video that is not in the AM copyright archive will not accidentally match up to a track that is. Not possible.
February 2, 2007 at 11:02 am
I am sorry to hear that Grouper is closing up shop. They were good in the day. I think YouTube will be around for a long time is a good alternative to groueper.
February 2, 2007 at 11:17 am
you misunderstand. The Grouper P2P file sharing application is gone. The Grouper video sharing Web site is still around and growing. http://grouper.com these are two separate things altogether.
February 9, 2007 at 9:27 am
please dont change the old grouper beta 2.0 it was working fine like they say if it works dont fix it so please just bring it back dont duck with it,,,, leave it alone it was working fine to many hand in the soup will fuck it up leave it alone already,,,,,,,,,
February 9, 2007 at 9:46 am
why did you change for whos brite idea was this it sure was not mine or other members like myself who got reall piss of ,, why did you grouper beta 2.0 had to stop when i was just working fine thank you,, why did you have to spoil a wet dream for shame on your staff for making a big mistake, here in grouper i felt safe and had may good members in my group that i dont chat with anymore,, so its hard to swallow,, now that its gone,, i just dont understand when something good was working fine why would any one change it, why you never make one other one besides grouper beta and name it something else than combinning both together,, i just dont understand the logic BRING BACK GROUPER BETA 2.O THANK YOU
February 9, 2007 at 9:50 am
shit i wish i new how to make my own grouper beta p2p file sharing then i bet i would have all those members back aboard, cuase i know they were disappointed like me and only wish grouper beta 2.0 was back
February 9, 2007 at 9:54 am
Grouper client users were enthusiastic but there just weren’t enough of them. only around 25,000 users compared with millions of daily visitors/users of our video sharing site. The numbers just weren’t enough to base a business on. Sorry, but P2P file share via grouper is only a happy memory.
February 15, 2007 at 6:56 pm
I think one problem with grouper client adoption was the fact that everyone involved in sharing had to download and install the client.
Take a look at http://www.zeegzaag.com, a service that just launched. It is a mix of wikis and p2p file sharing. You can share files directly from folders on your PC. Folks downloading the files do not need to install anything. All they need is a web browser.
February 16, 2007 at 6:36 am
Good luck to them. Seriously. Blatantly allowing sharing of copyrighted material is a brave thing — to flaunt the current legal precedents, I hope they stay in business, as is.
April 19, 2007 at 11:37 am
Here’s a crazy thought…is there any way we can purchase the Grouper software or IP and keep it going? I know there are lots of other tools out these (as mentioned above) but I have not found one that was as good as Grouper.
Perhaps we could get the IP in a fire sale situation and keep it going? Am I just being naive here or does anyone else think it possible?
April 19, 2007 at 11:51 am
That’s not the way things work. A better plan would be to build your own software that has the features you like.