Archive for: torrent
There are so many torrent search engines in the market and as we all know most of them are considered illegal by all major media companies. I find it funny that these torrent search engines are normally just indexing where files are stores online in the same way as Google, and not even hosting the files on their own servers.
The newest torrent search engine on the market is KickassTorrents. KickassTorrents has a great user interface that is very easy to use and search through. Additionally, the site has an amazing index of music, files, documents, movies, games, tv shows, applications and more.
The community around KickassTorrents seems to also be on the rise as they have a growing number of leechers and seeders on the site. Plus, they have additions like a Firefox addon, Vuze addon and others.
If you are looking for a Torrent Search engine that is on the rise and is already in the top 5,000 alexa, then KickassTorrents is for you!
Bittorrent is currently a huge market on the internet. Tribler P2P research team at Delft University of Technology has reported the current marketshare numbers between the top bittorrent clients available at the moment.
uTorrent remains the client of choice for over 60% of all BitTorrent users. Vuze is in second place, but its market share has dropped to 14%. Transmission, on the other hand, continues to gain ground, with the client’s market share increasing by 23% in the last two months.
The data is based from over 17,221 unique user in a few dozen public Bittorrent swarms. Bittorrent is still by far the lading file-sharing technology with millions of people using the protocol every day.
BitTorrent Client Market Share, October 2009
| Ranking |
Client |
Market Share % |
Change % |
Platform |
|
| 1 |
uTorrent |
60.16% |
+5.90% |
Windows, Mac |
| 2 |
Vuze |
14.22% |
-21.56% |
Windows, Mac, Linux |
| 3 |
BitTorrent Mainline |
8.65% |
-26.63% |
Windows, Mac, Linux |
| 4 |
BitComet |
4.43% |
-5.95% |
Windows |
| 5 |
Transmission |
3.65% |
+23.73% |
Mac, Linux |
| * |
Unknown |
7.97% |
+89.31% |
na. |
| * |
Other |
0.92% |
-34.29% |
na. |
BitSnoop is a new torrent search engine that is supposedly better than its rivals because of a new tactic it uses when searching for torrents; indexing and combining of torrents and getting rid of duplicated ones.The torrents are generated by Tracker Match. It locates all the relevant trackers to your search and removes duplicated torrents or ‘bad’ torrents to avoid slow downloads.
I think that the homepage which you can see above is quite nice as it’s minimalistic – after all it’s there for one purpose and one purpose only. Google has had much by employing the purposeful look by using minimal text and images. The results, seen below, are also well presented and spaced out; again a minimalistic look.
Overall, I thought it was okay. I didn’t really notice much of a change in my regular download speed but the fact that it was taking away duplicated torrents was comforting, I guess. Check it out for yourself here.
Previously we talked about Torrents.to in which allows users search various torrent search engines in one place. On of our readers has let us know about TorrentScan, in which is another torrent meta search engine but it has a lot of great features that some others dont.
TorrentScan is a torrent meta search engine which allows users to search across various torrent search engines all in one place. TorrentScan allows you to search Mininova, SumoTorrent, BTjunkie, Isohunt, Fenopy, Torrentz and more. TorrentScan also lets you customise your search and even the entire look and feel of the site itself. With a simple click you are able to see your search results between the torrent search engines.
If you are looking for an easy and simple way to search through multiple torrent sites at once, then TorrentScan should be your first option.
Our friends over at TorrentFreak have put together an amazing list of Pirate Bay alternatives in a variety of areas. Here is the basic list.
Full Pirate Bay Alternatives
The only full Pirate Bay alternatives are sites that index torrent files, are open to everyone and also have a working tracker. Unfortunately, there are only a few sites out there that offer this full package -there are four of them below. We decided to include Demonoid here because it tracks many public torrents.
4. Demonoid (semi-private)
Torrent Indexers
Torrent indexers are sites that have a searchable directory of torrent files, but don’t host a (public) tracker of their own. Mininova has a tracker, but they only allow ‘featured’ torrents uploaded through their content distribution service. The most used torrent indexers are:
Torrent Meta-Seach Engines
BitTorrent meta-search engines are yet another brand of torrent sites. They don’t have a tracker and don’t host any torrent files on their servers. Instead they search for and link to torrents hosted on third party sites.
Private Trackers (open signup)
Most of the larger private trackers require an invite to join, but there are always a few that allow new members. Below are four of these (open) private trackers and more can be found on Btracs.
Standalone BitTorrent Trackers
Torrent indexers and meta-search engines can be used to find torrents, but none of them will be of much use without a stable BitTorrent tracker. Standalone BitTorrent trackers are much needed, they handle the communication between downloaders but don’t index any torrents themselves.
DIY Pirate Bay Alternatives
The last category of Pirate Bay alternatives are the do-it-yourself projects. By using the three ingredients below The Pirate Bay can be easily rebuilt. It might take a few hours, but then the path to world domination is clear.
Last but not Least
Google, the mother of all search engines has a filetype:torrent search command that allows you to find torrent files scattered across the Internet. Don’t tell the MPAA and RIAA.
Last week isoHunt updated its indexing code and performed a thorough re-crawl of the indexed sites, resulting in an increase from 1.65 million to 3.49 million torrents. This week the team tackled another problem, namely, how to find the right torrent more effectively.
isoHunt’s founder Gary Fung mentioned that they made several changes to the search algorithms resulting in a superior quality of the search results. The changes should make it easier for the site’s users to find what they are looking for.
Aside from the improved results, the team also added option to narrow down the results to a specific source, Gary explained on Facebook.
isoHunt is currently the third largest torrent site ranked by the number of daily users.
It has been confirmed by the guys at The Pirate Bay that they are in the process of selling their site. Gaming company Global Gaming Factory X is in the process of acquiring The Pirate bay for $7.8 million (SEK 60 million). The acquisition is scheduled to be completed by August and will see the site launch new business models to compensate content providers and copyright owners.
The story was broken by Torrentfreak and they are going to keep updating everyone once new information comes to light.
Global Gaming Factory X will not just acquire The Pirate Bay site but they will also acquire the file-sharing technology company Peerialism. Global Gaming Factory X claims to have the biggest network of internet cafés and gaming centers in the world, so this technology will be a great addition to their company.
Global Gaming Factory X is also very interested in changing The Pirate Bay’s business model which will allow the compensation to the content providers and copyright owners.
“We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site,” said Hans Pandeya, CEO Global Gaming Factory X.
“The Pirate Bay is a site that is among the top 100 most visited Internet sites in the world. However, in order to live on, The Pirate Bay requires a new business model, which satisfies the requirements and needs of all parties, content providers, broadband operators, end users, and the judiciary,” said Pandeya.
File-sharing technology company Peerialism will also be acquired by Global Gaming Factory X for a total of SEK 100 million, of which at least SEK 50 million will be in cash.
I find the amount of $7.8 million to be a little low, based upon The Pirate Bay having similar traffic numbers to Mininova which have 727 million pageviews per month. If each pageview could be monetized at $1.00 CPM (per 1000 views), then The Pirate Bay would be making $727,000 per month.
Have you ever struggled to find the torrents you are looking for? This means that you have to travel to 10 different sites until you find something that vaguely looks like the right torrent! TorrentZen aims to come to your rescue. TorrentZen is a live bittorrent search engine that brings the results of some of your favourite bittorrent search engines.
TorrentZen works in the same way as other torrent tracks but instead of actually hosting pages with the results, they provide a link to those pages on other search engines. Therefore TorrentZen functions in the same basic way as a meta search engine.
Previously here on Crenk we have talked about the top torrent trackers on the web and this time I want to outline the top 5 multi-search torrent tools.
NowTorrents. Searches up to twelve sites at once. I like the file type tabs and health indicator, and they offer a Firefox and IE compatible search plugin.
uSniff. I wrote about uSniff before, and I use it quite often. I don’t really search a lot of different sites, usually just Pirate Bay and IsoHunt, and they’re both supported (along with six others). The interface is clean and responds quickly – the search box throws some people off, though. I don’t understand why, it’s giant, orange, and says “search” on it. They also have a search plugin for IE and Firefox.
ScrapeTorrent. Offers a nice preference page and searches nine sites at once. Piratebay, IsoHunt, Mininova, and Demonoid are included, and they’re my go-to sites anyways. I approve!
Speckly. I hate the way it displays results: gobs and gobs of text, Google style, and all on one page. There aren’t any sorting options, though you can at least view by file type.
Torrentz. Technically it searches multiple sites, but you’ll get a general results page first. Clicking one of the results will take you to a listing of all the individual torrents. I find it an annoying process, and don’t use Torrentz as a result.
Over at RouteNote (a free digital music distribution service) they have started to offer some of their artists live session videos via bittorrent sites. RouteNote has partned with Mininova to provide their content on the Mininova platform for all users to download for free.
At RouteNote the belief is that bittorrent clients provide a great access to millions of viewers every month. With major labels currently fighting sites like The Pirate Bay over copyright issues, it is good to see that RouteNote is adopting this technology and trying to find ways for it to help spread the word of their artists and music.
My belief is that bittorrent trackers arent going to go away any time soon, and that the technology has great benefits and sometimes you just have to think outside the box to find revenues streams. Music on the internet is currently quite a complex market and in the future I think that download sales arent going to be a key revenue stream, and more sites will appear that have advertising models such as Spotify and Imeem. The era of CDs and albums are over, artists will have to produce great tracks not albums and then promote these either as paid downloads or for mass adoption which makes money in other forms.
RouteNote downloads can be found at Mininova.
Disclosure: Im CEO of Insomnia Ltd which ownes RouteNote
Torrent giant The Pirate Bay has launched an interactive map showing where people are seeding and leeching torrents around the world, with data for every country giving a percentage of users, and how many connections are going through that country.
It’s a Google Maps mash-up, which is already serving up some fascinating data. “In the near future more statistics will be added, such as the type of BitTorrent clients people use, and the average download and upload speeds per region,” claims TorrentFreak, which reported the news.
