This week Morpheus (#13) becomes the first topic to join the Lycos 50 Elite since we introduced the feature back in November. In order to become a member of the Lycos 50 Elite, a topic must spend 50 straight weeks among the 50 hottest topics online.

We're not sure, however, how much longer Morpheus will be on the Lycos 50. Morpheus went to #1 in March when its network briefly went offline. When it came back, it had been changed, and, in the opinion of many users, not for the better.

The brief history of file-swapping software has been summarized as follows: Software comes from out of nowhere to get popular. One particular software application becomes far more popular than others. That application runs into legal trouble and changes its system. Within a short period of time, a new, more liberated software network replaces the old software as the most popular. The old software still gets searches for a while, as users learn that they don't like it anymore, and then slowly falls off the Lycos 50.

Morpheus has been losing popularity online ever since dropping out of the online Fast Track network and forming their own network, which cut down significantly on the number of files available and pushed files which cost money to download instead of free files. As Napster was replaced by Morpheus, now Morpheus has been replaced by KaZaA (now #7), which passed it as the Internet's top file-swapping software in April.

One of the things making KaZaA so popular is a new version called KaZaA Lite. The original KaZaA (like a number of free file-swapping programs) installs software called "spyware" on your computer that records your preferences and sends them back to a central server. It's supposed to be used to feed you advertisements that fit your interests, but many Internet junkies find the idea of somebody tracking their clicks to be repulsive. KaZaA Lite is also missing "adware," which downloads advertisements to your computer even if you are not connected to the program. About 10 percent of KaZaA searches are for KaZaA Lite.

We are still shocked by the high number of searches we still get each week for the original peer-to-peer file-swapping software, Napster. This week, Napster is back on the list briefly because of news that it nearly went bankrupt this week before being acquired by the media conglomerate Bertelsmann AG. But while it doesn't usually make the Lycos 50, Napster does get regular searches, and it is usually in our top 80 or so topics.

Our theory is that Napster has gone from being a brand name to being a product name. When people want file sharing, they search for Napster, in the same way people call all flying plastic discs frisbees even though only a few are made by the Frisbee company. Check out the search page for Napster, and you'll see a listing for a page called "After Napster," as well as a link to other file-swapping programs like WinMX.

Audiogalaxy continues to be the #3 file-swapper, behind KaZaA and Morpheus. It usually comes in between #40 and #60 depending on usual week-to-week variation, which explains why it is sometimes on the Lycos 50 and sometimes not. Past that, there doesn't seem to be any breakout candidates for the next big thing in file-swapping. The closest is a software called eDonkey which gets about one-third the searches needed to get onto the Lycos 50 but has doubled in searches since the beginning of 2002.

TOMORROW: Silence of the bottom feeders.