BitTorrent has reached a milestone; they now have 100 million monthly users. In addition, the company has also disclosed that it has over 20 million daily active users and over 400,000 daily client downloads. Depending who you are, those stats either make you cringe or leave you gleeful. My bet is that it makes you cringe. That users check in to the clients from over 220 countries every day isn't something you're too happy about. Here's a list of five important things you should know about the recent BitTorrent stats:
- The 100 Million User Count Is Missing A Couple Million, says Ty Dunitz at Techi. “What makes these figures ever-more impressive is that they don't include the users of the nigh-countless unofficial clients, of which many of you likely are," he says. “It's a wonder BitTorrent is comfortable even revealing these numbers... considering the service's reputation as the essential piracy tool..." To which he adds, “let's be honest... what's in your BT queue right now?" It's Inception.
- Music Barely Made the Top 50 Most Searched for Terms, notes Chloe Albanesius at PC Mag. That's right, Eminem, the one of the biggest artists of the year, barely made the list at 47. No other artist made the list. “A recent report from torrent site KickassTorrents, however, found that the most popular searches on BitTorrent during 201o were for Blockbuster Hollywood movies and porn," she says. “The top 10 search terms included Inception, Iron Man 2, 2010, XXX, French, Avatar, Dvdrip, Despicable Me, Porn, and Clash of the Titans."
- BitTorrent Made Efforts To Become A Legitimate Service, argues Dean Takahashi at VentureBeat. He writes, “BitTorrent says it has created new initiatives aimed at legitimate file-sharing of independent works. It has film distribution deals with VODO that include the films Pioneer One, Yes Men, Four Eyed Monsters and an album from Paz." Their Artist Spotlight program is live.
- How Do We Put The BitTorrent Stats Into Context? asks Austin Carr at Fast Company. “BitTorrent now boasts more active users than Hulu and Netflix combined—and then doubled," he says. “The popular TV and movie providers have 30 million and 16.9 million users, respectively. BitTorrent has nearly half of iTunes' users and YouTube's monthly users in the U.S. It has about the same active users as viewers on Yahoo and Facebook combined." He concedes, “the above comparisons are not exact—comparing free download sites to subscription streaming services or retail outlets in users isn't exactly apples to apples."
- BitTorrent Makes Most of Its Money From Toolbars, reveals Ernesto at TorrentFreak. “The irony is that the company which founded one of the most innovative technologies on the web in the last ten years, has not managed to build a new business model around it," he writes. “Perhaps the BitTorrent powered movie store and CDN were ahead of its time, but the fact is that the company now relies on a toolbar to pay the salaries of its employees."
