Ten Most Used BitTorrent Sites Compared

An anonymous reader writes that "This study was just released that compares the ten most popular BitTorrent sites. A great read if you are torn between what site to use, it has benchmark graphs and anaylsis. I was rather suprised with the findings." I hadn't heard of several of the top sites they rate. But why is it that so many torrent sites are so ugly?

Ugly? In What Way?

[eldavojohn]

I hadn't heard of several of the top sites they rate. But why is it that so many torrent sites are so ugly?

Excellent question! But a difficult one to answer because, if cheesy TV has taught me anything, isn't beauty in the eye of the beholder?

I've never taken a UI design course. And I'm probably the last person on earth to be able to make one. I'm an engineer developer and my web services often have no front end. If they do, it is one of ice cold ability to do what you want -- the perfect marriage of function and function.

So what about these sites displeases you? I just flipped through four of them and none of them made my eyes puke like an angry fruit salad (although BushTorrent did cause me to cringe at the site of my 'fearless leader') ... so what in particular is the problem?

Hell, I even visited Torrentz and, although the 90s called and asked for their 'z' back, the design was still pleasing to me. I went to isoHunt that was minimalist but still did the job. I went to MegaNova and even though it was busy as hell, it had the top torrents laid out by category. So what's the problem? There are a few flaws here and there but these sites serve the function they are there to perform. The only really ugly things on these sites are the ads. So far I've seen one flashing ad and one shaking ad. Those are offensive to my eye but I'm so use to ignoring them! I mean, the people who run these indexing sites probably don't get revenue from anything but ads so to make their pages load faster, they inundate us with banners and Ads By Google. So what? So does Slashdot and I'm here quite often. It's the 00s, most sites would put ads by Google on their own grandmother if she was digital.

I don't see any problems with these UIs. They're not award winning, but then again, should they be? I mean, the few times I've used bittorrent is because a site wants to host a large file illegally (like a WoW patch or whatever) and they instead offer a torrent file. I'm really interested in what everyone else is interested in and, if you are, then just go to these sites and peruse them. Don't make them your homepage.

If you really think they're that horrible, wander back to Geocities user pages and enjoy dancing Jesus and Flying Toasters with the blink marquee tag abused to high hell. Then you'd be overjoyed to see some of the gradient blends used on these pages.

From the quote at the bottom of /. as I read this:

[tygerstripes]

There's something the technicians need to learn from the artists. If it isn't aesthetically pleasing, it's probably wrong.

Re:From the quote at the bottom of /. as I read th

[eldavojohn]

There's something the technicians need to learn from the artists. If it isn't aesthetically pleasing, it's probably wrong.

How hilariously coincidental. And although it may be the quote of the moment, I must counter with something I've said to many people: Stephen Hawking isn't very aesthetically pleasing but he's rarely wrong.

Or, conventionally cited as "you can't judge a book by its cover."

What it means is that I've seen some very ugly things create or provide very beautiful things. Elliott Smith was ugly but his music was beautiful. Although the library I went to as a kid was ugly and looked like an old bomb shelter, it provided something very important to me. Although snakes and earth worms and spiders look ugly as hell, I still love what they do. And, as a kid, it made sense to me to kill rabbits and pocket gophers on a farm while making sure not to harm a garden snake as I mowed the lawn.

Like I'll still maintain, whether something is beautiful or ugly tells me nothing.

Re:

[Ed Avis]

Stephen Hawking isn't very aesthetically pleasing but he's rarely wrong.

I thought one of the main tests scientists use when evaluating a new theory is whether it 'looks right' or its 'beauty' (which could be another way of saying simplicity). And in mathematics, conjectures are often judged by how pretty the equation seems - to decide which ones are likely to be right, and worth trying to make a proof for. Certainly in programming the aesthetic quality of a program is the most important thing after making

Re:From the quote at the bottom of /. as I read th

[Jesapoo]

You can write very beautiful code and yet have an interface as ugly as sin... likewise, you can have horrible spaghetti code lying behind a very pretty GUI.

Besides, isn't it good design to keep the interface of your program slightly ugly, whilst maintaining a logical and flowing design, as to avoid distracting the user from what they're trying to do? Flowers and curves and ponies are all well and good, but they don't necessarily make for an easy to use interface.

Re:

[tygerstripes]

I just mentioned it as, yes, a hilarious coincidence.

However, you're talking apples & oranges here, although you've raised an interesting point. What wer're talking about is the act of creation, whereas you're talking about the creator (I use "creation" here loosely).

The idea as I understand it is that a well-trained scientist/engineer/mathematician/whatever has a good sense of what works well and what doesn't. He develops a sort of "instinct" for what is a successful and elegant implementation, and w

Re:

[tygerstripes]

Ye-eeeess, but they weren't designed, were they? We're talking about the process of design, and what makes a design beautiful. You didn't really understand anything I said after the first sentence, did you?

Re:

[Associate]

You took the subtle insult out of my fingers.

Re:

[cayenne8]

"Stephen Hawking were in front of you, you might find them displeasing"

No disrespect meant to Mr. Hawking, but, in analogy land, this is the perfect example of brilliant code behind a very fucked up interface.

Could he be more effective if he wasn't handicapped? I'd dare say yes. If he could walk and talk normally, he could communicate faster and more efficiently, and could more easily travel around the world to speak and to research with others.

If the 'back end' of Mr. Hawking was not so terribly brilli

Re:

[pilkul]

You're missing the point. Nobody ever said the physical appearance of a person has anything to do with their talents, but the quote is valid in a number of other contexts. For example, the theory of relativity gained a lot of traction before solid experimental evidence appeared because physicists found it elegant. And to get back to what started this thread, in UI design, attractiveness and functionality are often much the same. A messy, cluttered interface is both ugly and hard to use. Meanwhile, an i

Re:

[ultranova]

Or, conventionally cited as "you can't judge a book by its cover."

You can and do. That's why most books have covers that try to be interesting without causing an information overload. That second points is what most web designers seem to have a problem with, and the problem is made worse by the advert-driven nature of the Webs economics.

That, and most web pages are designed either by kids who don't have any sense of style or old-school designers who can't get it through their heads that the Web page i

Re:

[ceoyoyo]

You don't need to use Steven Hawking. You can use his ideas, which are beautiful and are generally presented in a beautiful way.

If your webpage (which is your user interface) is really ugly and hard to use then it's wrong. Interfaces should be as simple as possible and easy to use. That makes them beautiful.

Re:

[HTH NE1]

You don't READ the library. You don't even read the cover. You read the book.

Still, a library in a lightless, stairless basement unkempt restroom that keeps its books locked in filing cabinets tend not to its books read. The signage warning of large feline carnivores doesn't help either.

If the book is horribly laid out with gray text on black paper so it is hard to read...

The reason for such things is copy protection to make it difficult to impossible to make a legible photocopy. This was typical of some

Re:

[cayenne8]

"I always thought Steve was rather lovely...and have you heard the man rap?!"

If you're talking about Steve Hawking, I dunno about his 'rap', but, he did have a decent part on the Division Bell album, by Pink Floyd.

A GUI revolution has taken place.

[Anonymous Coward]

Over the past few years, a GUI revolution has taken place, and it hasn't necessarily been beneficial. Surprisingly, it arose from what was once NeXTSTEP, which was often considered the most sane GUI out there. Mac OS X brought us a bubbly, colourful GUI with lots of shading. It was attractive to many people, but serious computer users who use their Macs for publishing, development, etc., found it to be wasteful. The large bubbly buttons took up more screen real estate than simple rectangles. The shading oft

Re:

[ceoyoyo]

Have you used OS X? The window control buttons are microscopic compared to the ones in Windows and most X window managers. The buttons have rounded off ends... so what? Everybody's human interface guidelines say you're not supposed to make the label go right to the edges of the button anyway, so OS X buttons don't take up any more space than rectangular ones do. There's one menu bar, not one for each window, saving space. Things like dock icons that magnify when you move the mouse over them save more s

Re:

[ceoyoyo]

So far you've said that the GUI isn't perfect for all people. I'll agree. However, I disagree that it's gotten significantly worse. I think it's improved quite a bit (though I haven't looked at Vista). Now, if you were talking about the default theme in XP, there I could agree with you. Nothing like primary colours.

I notice that all (or at least all the ones I use) of Apple's pro apps either use the alternate GUI look and feel with smaller, more compact buttons (without significant shading) or use thei

Re:

[ben there...]

I really hate replying to this, because there are so many people that make these Apple worshiping posts that I won't have time to reply to all of them. But I really can't take much more of this.

Apple's UIs are not good. Take iTunes 7 for example. The search has no autocomplete. The iTunes store browser has no right-click to give you a Back option. When you purchase a track or get a podcast, it gives you no indication it has started other than a small indicator next to Downloads. When a download finishes and

Re:

[spoco2]

I have no mod points at present... so "Bravo!" will have to suffice :)

Re:

[quiddity]

"Apple uses three GUI styles: Aqua [wikipedia.org], Brushed Metal [wikipedia.org] and Pro [wikipedia.org]."

Re:

[strikethree]

Why does it have to be an either/or proposition? Why can't the framework for a personalized GUI be made available and then allow the user to choose what size/color they want their buttons, dialogs, etc? Put whatever default is currently in vogue such as flashy graphics or whatever and then let the user change it to suit their needs... kind of like how Windows XP lets you get rid of the PlaySkool interface and go back to classic mode. (oh my god, i just complimented microsoft! i think i can fix that real qui

Re:

[Blakey Rat]

I love it when people start the post with, basically: "I have no sense of aesthetics whatsoever" and then proceed to give aesthetic reviews of websites.

If you don't know it, and you admit you don't know it, why the heck should anybody keep reading the post? That's just goofy as hell.

Thanks

[ricky-road-flats]

But why is it that so many torrent sites are so ugly?

... good question, but you ask it then point us to a page with acres of exposed lime green background...

Re:

[Turakamu]

Thank goodness you warned me; I was under mistaken impression it was "web 2.0 olive".

Function not form.

[RLiegh]

No one really cares what the site looks like when they're trying to grab their 0-day moviez.

Another function

[Mateo_LeFou]

I was surprised to find that legaltorrents.com is not even mentioned. Are they such a bit player? Is there a bigger, better site in that space (i.e. free/openn/cc culture)?

Re:

[ichigo 2.0]

Is there a bigger, better site in that space (i.e. free/openn/cc culture)?

Probably not in that space, but the article is about the ten most used bittorrent sites overall.

Re:

[advocate_one]

seriosly... have you ever examined what's there? approx 50 torrents of weird stuff no-one's ever heard of or ever will... CC licensed work suffers from a fatal catch 22 at the moment... there are no big names using it... and until there are, there won't be any...

a far better site for music is here [etree.org] at least there are "names"

The original BT.com

[tygerstripes]

The editor basically slags it off for a number of (valid) reasons, and finishes by saying "I personally expected better from the "creator"."

Fair enough, but why the quotation marks? Is that meant to be a dig at Brah's "supposed" claim to have created it? Be fair, the guy created something that revolutionised the internet as a medium for media. I don't think he deserves that kind of attitude for not doing as great a job at implementing the service as he did with the software.

Re:The original BT.com

[Have Blue]

Apparently he thinks that BT was created in order for him to get warez and movies faster, and that "the creator" is somehow failing in his responsibilities by not facilitating this. Which is silly as the creator has always maintained that he developed BT as just a transport mechanism and tried to distance himself from "the scene" whenever given the chance.

Re:

[Kozz]

It's probably the same punctuation deficiency which causes businesses to craft advertisements/signs which read

On "Sale"

Re:

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

There's a barn I used to drive past to get to work that had "Top Quality 'HORSES and COWS'" After about a year, they had taken white-out to the quotations around "HORSES and COWS"

Re:

[Ossifer]

The worst possessive errors are restaurant names. There's a San Francisco-based chain called "Specialty's". I would really like to meet Mr. or Ms. Specialty...

Re:

[HTH NE1]

It's probably the same punctuation deficiency which causes businesses to craft advertisements/signs which read

On "Sale"

Nah, that's just truth in advertising. The prices aren't lower than they were last week; they just increased their "regular" price.

Not using it right, Joey

[Mateo_LeFou]

I'm "sorry"

Re:

[Sandor at the Zoo]

I think the editor put quotes around "creator" for the same reason he misspelled so many words.

Which of these

[stupidfoo]

Which of these top 10 sites focus on non-copyrighted material? You know, the stuff that the torrent fans bring up as the reason they use bittorrent?

Re:

[ShakaZ]

Maybe you meant which of these sites focus on legal downloads... it seems the author simply wasn't focusing on that type of torrent sites which are also quite popular. Up to know i was only aware of legal torrent downloads, primarily opensource software & operating systems, some from free music providers too... these often contain copyrighted material, though downloading them is perfectly legal..

Re:

[EzInKy]

Which of these top 10 sites focus on non-copyrighted material? You know, the stuff that the torrent fans bring up as the reason they use bittorrent?


Since current law makes just about everything copyright by default I'm afraid you are going to have a hard time finding any site that does not have potentially infringing material. The thing that really bites though is that it is almost impossible to determine whether a particular file is being distributed against the creator's wishes until it is downloaded and

Re:Which of these

[thatbox]

There's always Legaltorrents.com [legaltorrents.com], started by Simon Carless!

please note that all of the current torrents are made available under a Creative Commons license with the full permission of the rights holder.

Re:

[EzInKy]

There's always Legaltorrents.com, started by Simon Carless!


I've been to that site but its index page is extermely slim particularly considering that 99.9% of human creations are in the public domain or under freely redistrubutable licenses, not to mention it lacks a search feature.

The best Torrent sites are private...

[packeteer]

Honestly the best torrent sites are the semi-private ones. There are quite a few non-public bit torrent sites that are very easy to get into but are not directly available to anyone who goes to their web page.

I find that public BT sites are too slow becuase nobody cares to share much.

Re:

[packeteer]

I should have mentioned that one thing that bothers me the most about public torrent sites is all of the duped torrents and broken torrents.

Re:

[daranz]

The downside to semi-private torrent sites is that users try to beat each other at seeding instead of seeding simply to make live easier for others. They'll download small files and seed them for ages, or try to download a torrent from multiple sources and networks in order to be the first in line to seed. The ratio scores that many of these sites implement make it actually hard to get a higher ratio for your average user, because of the saturation of seeders.

Re:

[packeteer]

Maybe you belong to different torrent communities but i dont see this is a problem. Honestly there are quite a few seeders that are based on university networks or even trojaned boxes. These provide quite a lot of uload speed to the community for all the leachers to download from. You are rightr that there are a few people who uploaded terabytes and never download in return. Thats not a bad thing for the average member, that means you can have leachers and the community wont fall apart.

Re:

[TorKlingberg]

I have better use for my time than convincing some 14-year-old to let me in on his super-elite torrent tracker. I like going to a public site, search, click, forget it for a while, and it's done. If you are looking for some specific genre and find a private site specializing on just than I can see the point. But hey, even anime is mainstream by now.

Re:

[Nasarius]

Honestly the best torrent sites are the semi-private ones. Agreed. But I still hate the ultra-private, invite-only ones that make you jump through hoops to join. Are they that desperate to keep out leechers, or is there some other reason? I've ended up using Demonoid almost exclusively when I want to share something (I uploaded nearly 500GB in 8 months), because they're semi-public.

Re:The best Torrent sites are private...

[Fordiman]

Meanwhile, why isn't demonoid in this list? I can almost always find what I want there...

Re:

[ceoyoyo]

Because Demonoid is a member site and stopped accepting new members at least a year ago. I see they accept new members on weekends now. Annoying.

10 most popular

[Gothmolly]

Are the ones with the best warez, pr0n and movies. Who gives a crap about looks?

Re:

[Safety Cap]

Who gives a crap about looks?

If you can't complain about the content, bellyaching about the site's aesthetics is the way to go.

...especially if you're still living in your Parents' basement.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Who gives a crap about looks?

It's a bit like a bank thief complaining about mismatched furniture inside a bank.

Re:

[Otter]

Judging from the garbage on their lists (The #1 music download on the #2 site is "Meat Loaf - Bat Out of Hell III - The Monster Is Loose"), I'd say the problem is that the proprietors' taste in site design is about as good as their users' taste in what's worth stealing.

Speaking of which, I thought P2P was used primarily for legal downloads and that's why The Man was so eager to shut it down before Creative Commons drum'n'bass loops cut into the sales of, errr, "Meat Loaf - Bat Out of Hell III - The Monster

Re:

[giorgiofr]

I thought P2P was used primarily for legal downloads

BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA oh my...
no wait... gimme a sec... HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
*catches breath*
HEE HEE HEE HEE HEE HEE HEE HEE HEE HEE HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA...

Re:

[Fordiman]

Legal downloads don't need indexed or hosted. The torrents for legal downloads are easily found on the sites that create them.

Which, by the way, is exactly why the **AA goes after the torrent indexers and hosts. Go after the protocol, and you have every geek in the world screaming bloody murder. Go after the indexers, and you only have the pirates complaining.

Re:

[Firehed]

Half the torrents I have running right now are grey area at worst. TV shows that I could tape were still up in the air last I knew, but I'm downloading neither HD nor DVD rips so I consider someone else doing the work for me within my fair use rights.

Don't get me wrong - there are plenty of illegal torrents out there. Our argument is that you shouldn't stop something that can do a huge amount of good just because it might be used for bad. Good luck stopping all of bittorrent traffic worldwide... but plea

Public trackers suck

[InterBigs]

There are lots (quasi-)private trackers, which not only have as many torrents listed as the sites mentioned in the article, but also provide a lot more quality (in download speed) because of the involved ratio system (demon**** is a good example of this). And there are some very hot 0-day trackers which, even though they only track torrents for 1000 hours, are very popular among many people (such as the file* sites).

Bittorrent-users aren't considered 1337 in general, but they can be 1337er than the ones who use the sites in this article :)

TFA's conclusion:

[kripkenstein]

... btjunkie.org

However, I'm not sure I can trust anything this 'review' says. For example, by the numbers btjunkie.org seems incredibly more successful than any of its competition, which seems a bit odd given that it doesn't seem that well-known (53,000 hits on Google; compare to mininova, which has 3,000,000). TFA says:

"At first I thought BTJunkie's numbers must be fake, but I assure you it is real! I tested the number posted with the number in the actual directory for the day and they matched for a week straight!"

Yes, I am sure that you did, and I am also sure that you don't own btjunkie.org. 100% sure.

Re:

[The Blow Leprechaun]

I've been using btjunkie regularly for about a year now. It is pretty good because it has so much, but it's slow as hell and you lose all seeders frequently because, as someone previously mentioned, public bittorrent sites kind of suck.

One of the more important elements of a good bittorrent site is a responsive community so that you can request things and actually expect them to be upped. Nothing like being able to get a VHS rip of Howard the Duck or War Games, older stuff that it's harder to find.

On

Re:TFA's conclusion:

[ichigo 2.0]

On a related note, I was under the impression that the Pirate Bay had been taken down and was now being closely monitored and downloading from them was essentially flagging yourself.

Nope, the whole raid was apparently illegal and was done only because the white house pressured the Swedish government to do it, they might even end up getting paid restitution from their government (maybe that part's wishful thinking).

Also, here is a tracert of thepiratebay.org, it would be pretty devious of the MPAA to use this domain name (apb [wikipedia.org] is a swedish copyright lobby organisation):

Tracing route to piratebay.org [83.140.176.146] over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms 192.168.0.1

2 1 ms 2 ms 3 ms 192.168.1.62

.
.
.

9 18 ms 18 ms 18 ms netnod-ix-ge-a-sth-4470.port80.se [195.245.240.143]

10 19 ms 19 ms 18 ms hey.mpaa.and.apb.bite.my.shiny.metal.ass.thepirate bay.org [83.140.176.146]

:)

Re:

[Fordiman]

Nice to be able to afford it. I can just about afford broadband. Now, I'm not saying I'm a pirate or anything, but I do need entertained.

Re:

[AigariusDebian]

For an inside look on the raid and what happened after that and how the Pirate Party is involved, find "Steal This Movie" on you preferred P2P network :)

Re:

[AigariusDebian]

I actually ment Steal this film [wikipedia.org], like from here [stealthisfilm.com]

Re:

[in2mind]

I too have a feeling that the whole article is a whitewash written by BTjunkie.org itself. BTJunkie.org homepage links to that blog article. (which amusingly is featured in slashdot frontpage..Hmm)

And their stats seems to be HIGHLY INFLATED.

Todays Torrents:i,396
Total Torrents: 960,654
Total Trackers: 10,085
Total Seeders: 10.99mil
Total Leechers: 16.57mil

Excuse me.11 Million seeders?

Compare that with the stats of wellknown sites like Mininova...

Total torrents in database 148,079
Total torrent dow

Re:

[Nasarius]

The results are quite good, but if it can be brought down by Slashdot, it's not very useful.

Re:

[gad_zuki!]

Download more than 3 items from there and you get a "join us" blocking page. Yeah, this looks like a scam. Back to mininova and demonoid with me.

MPAA and RIIA

[minus_273]

How much you wanna bet the MPAA and RIIA are also reading this article. Thanks guys. Not only do you independently show which sites engage in copyright enfringement but also how much each site does that (on a daily basis no less)

Re:

[thelost]

I don't want to bet at all, the idea that they aren't aware of the major bittorrent sites out there is ridiculous.

Re:

[muffen]

How much you wanna bet the MPAA and RIIA are also reading this article. Thanks guys. Not only do you independently show which sites engage in copyright enfringement but also how much each site does that (on a daily basis no less)

Seriously? If they didn't know this already they are crappier then I thought, I my thoughts of the xxAA aren't high to begin with.

Re:

[minus_273]

what do these sites do that kazza does/did not do?

Re:

[minus_273]

They were found guilty of contributory infringement. Torrent trackers may also be sued for contributory infringement, but to claim that they are infringing copyright demonstrates a lack of understanding of how bit-torrent works."

Do you see where your logic fails?

Re:

[Fordiman]

"a few year ago it looked like RIAA was killing of bittorrent. What happended in between? It bittorrent as a alive and kicking now as it was 4 years ago or are people moving to emule?"

Actually, people moved from emule to BT.

The concept of BT being killed off is... erroneous. To have an operating BT site, you need a tracker, a seeder, and a number of clients. Since these things are all relatively easy to obtain and run, and are legal to posess and execute, it would be nigh impossible to make BT as a system

I personally still like The Pirate Bay

[r_bertram42]

It's one of those things you just get used to doing, and it's hard to move on to something else.

I actually started using Torrentz a while ago, but I couldn't get used to it's interface.

It's like when AltaVista was THE search engine and then came along Google. It took me some time until I really abandoned AltaVista.

Re:

[ResidntGeek]

Who would you trust more with your IP address and download data, though? Personally, I go with TPB.

Re:

[ramk13]

"How much you wanna bet the MPAA and RIIA are also reading this article. Thanks guys. Not only do you independently show which sites engage in copyright enfringement but also how much each site does that (on a daily basis no less)"

When you consider the amount of money those organizations spend on curbing piracy, it's hard to imagine they need to rely on the so-so research of a blogger. I'd imagine they hire a consulting company, and get a real, comprehensive report. Say one that covers the actual content an

Demonoid

[in2mind]

Iam surprised they didnt write about the Big daddy torrent tracker site Demonoid.com

Comparison Criteria

[Graywolf]

The sites are compared by number of torrents, new torrents per day and "site features". This does not reflect a site's usability at all! What is importent is the average seeder/leecher quota and the availability + quality of "fresh" material. Those are obviously much harder to measure.

For example, BTJunkie is "Editor's Choice" because it lists the most torrents, including "private" ones they find using a Google-likc web crawler. This means lots of available content, but can you guess how much junk/old/inactive torrents you will find there? I think you have to test the sites yourself to find what suits your requirements best. Still, good list of the "bigger" torrent sites there.

"So many torrents sites are so ugly!"

[Dystopian Rebel]

I can see the new communications strategy of the RIAA and MPAA:

"Not only are you a thief for downloading music and movies, downloading makes you gay!"

user comments

[ElephanTS]

The only thing a torrent site really needs is a user comment section. If the quality is bad you'll read about it before you download like 1.4G of data and waste your time.

I think all these sites are pretty good in their way and to mark them down as 'ugly' doesn't make much sense.

If someone made one using Flash would it be any better? The answer is no (and I develop flash sites too).

bt junkie . . .

[ElephanTS]

. . . has been slashdotted. So get off it slashdotters, it's my site and I need it. ;-)

Succeeding Like Success

[Doc Ruby]

The beauty of the BT protocol is that greater popularity means faster downloads, due to more simultaneous sources of content. So I'd expect there to eventually result just the biggest BT network, attracting everyone from slower, smaller networks. Like eBay, or any other increasingly "perfect capital market".

And I'd expect the content available to eventually "diffuse" across these networks, equalizing in availability on all of them, especially the largest.

But BT is now several years old, with many global users, and there are still lots of little networks and very different content available. What's working against those basic borg trends?

Re:

[Doc Ruby]

What stops people already in the largest communities from using content from the big ones to get content from the small ones and then put it on the big ones where there's more to trade for?

Ten most used bittorrent

[shiyun074238]

Ten most used bittorrent
BTJunkie
BitTorrent.com
Bushtorrent & Torrentreactor
isoHunt
Meganova
Mininova
The Pirate Bay
Torrent Portal
TorrentSpy
Torrentz

popular?

[Rulke]

I could be dead wrong here, but isn't popularity rated as in 'people that use it'? giving us raw numbers like what it looks like, how many torrents are hosted and how many more it can sponge of the web isn't telling me that... it just tells me how big they are.. relativly speaking He tells us why it could be popular, not if it is, he fails the headline..

Pot calling the Kettle Black

[ericdano]

Seriously. Slashdot calling something ugly? That is totally the Pot calling the kettle black.

Most torrent sites seem to be designed with two things in mind. Functionality and Ads. That's it.

Too bad most of those arn't torrent sites.

[kinglink]

Many of those are torrent AGGREGATORS. The difference is simply those don't host torrents, they just allow you to search through a catalog.

It's like calling Google Froogle (love the name) a store. It's not a store, it's a search engine FOR stores.

I love Torrentspy, but with out sites like the pirate bay Torrentspy would be dead, same thing for ISO hunt and many of the rest. The pirate bay is the only site on there that I know that is an actual Torrent site that hosts torrents. The rest that I know of just hosts links to torrents hosted on different servers. It's a completely different system and as such it shouldn't be compared.

Hell a posting like this is exactly what the anti-torrent community was looking for, now they can nail the top 10 torrent sites in a row (except pirate bay, I'm still doubting they will be able to take that down.)

Reputable

[aitikin]

I find it hard to believe that this is a reputable source when they abbreviate "The Pirate Bay" as TBP!

All of them..

[d_jedi]

Have illegal content.

Why is Slashdot encouraging piracy?

Re:

[thrillseeker]

Approximately one-fourth of accidents involve unlicensed drivers [transportation.org] i.e driving illegally. Should we eliminate all roads in the country to prevent such abuse? Why do automakers who sell "affordable" vehicles facilitate such illegal activity?

None of them...

[ylikone]

have illegal content. Only LINKS to get illegal content. The bittorrent users themselves are the ones hosting the illegal content.

Why are the sites ugly?

[smellsofbikes]

Well, you know the sexist old joke about ugly women. This is just the opposite side of the coin: when you deliver quality goods, you don't have to include the latest aesthetic fads.

Pirate Bay slam?

[nurb432]

"Famous for their blatant disregard for intellectual property rights,"

Um, last time i heard what are doing is legal in their country, so tell me again what hey are 'blantly disregarding'?

Or is it ok to judge others based on your concept of right and wrong?

I'm developer of isoHunt.com, study is flawed

[AmVidia HQ]

Disclaimer: I'm developer of isoHunt.com and want to point out what's missing in your review.

1) Your reliance on claimed index size is flawed. BTJunkie's size claim looks to be non-unique torrents. To put it in perspective, isoHunt's non-unique master index is 1.7+ million torrents, while the searcheable index is the 300k+ count published (active and unique torrents).

2) A better methodology on review search engines is to sample search results, and rank by the relevance and scope of the results. You will see the search results counts to be more inline than the claimed index sizes you used for your review.

3) FYI, isoHunt indexes 7/9 other sites you reviewed, including BTJunkie.

4) It would be nice to be more specific in how you rated site features. Also, speed and relevance of search should be important factors for ranking all the sites.

5) Shameless plug: if you are talking about site features, an important one you've missed is cross-referenced trackers in all our indexed torrents. So each torrent we index is augmented by multiple trackers that would be tracking it, so you get the maximum number of peers in your torrent download. No site in your review has this ability, other than Torrentz.com (but they don't cache the torrents so you don't get any benefit for the actual download, as you get the original torrents from original sites).

Cheers,
IH

Re:

[AmVidia HQ]

I forgot 2 more points:

6) BTJunkie's "mail new torrents" feature is hardly unique. isoHunt has RSS feeds for every search result and category. RSS is also available from most of the other sites, although maybe not for every search result.

7) Torrentz.com's "search for files within torrents" is not unique either. isoHunt always searches within torrents. You should notice it from highlighted filenames in the torrents' details.

Great Tool

[chenjeru]

Scrapetorrent [http://scrapetorrent.com/] provides both a web-based and a FireFox plugin search tool for scanning TorrentSpy, PirateBay, IsoHunt and MiniNova. I find it wickedly convenient.

i'm just glad

[Rooked_One]

they don't list the one I use... is that selfish? YUP!

Index indexer

[LordSnooty]

And this site has a fair go at searching through all the best BT sites - http://torrent-finder.com/index.wld [torrent-finder.com]

Taco gettin uppity

[drix]

But why is it that so many torrent sites are so ugly?

You mean like, as ugly as Slashdot before three months ago? :-)

mldonkey and dllink

[tangent3]

Some of the torrent trackers use download links that does URL redirection that mldonkey isn't able to handle when the "dllink $url" command is sent to it. BTjunkie is one which gives me problem, isohunt and piratebay torrent links works fine for me. Anyone has any idea if there is a fix for this or should I simply stick to sites with links that work?

Re:

[b00le]

If we examine the statement from by the Grammar Police...

Hand over your badge and your blue pencil, you're off the case.