Orginally on TechCrunch. I had previously written about Grouper before because of their unique commenting on video with video feature, but I had not realized that they had a developed a closed (non-bittorent) P2P network for distributing media between members on the site, which seems to be a major reason behind Sony's interest in the video startup. Unfortunately, the desktop application is only available for Windows XP, sorry MAC users.

Apparently, Grouper has been rather successful in attracting interst having had about 542,000 unique visitors in July 2006. However, in compariosn to YouTube’s 16 million, the price tag for Grouper's acquisition seems to be a bit high. I suppose, however, that in a rush to discover new and profitable ways to distribute media online, companies like Sony are willing to pay a high price.