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.

Function not form.

[RLiegh]

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

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.

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?

10 most popular

[Gothmolly]

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

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 :)

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:The best Torrent sites are private...

[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:Which of these

[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..

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.

Demonoid

[in2mind]

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

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).

Re:MPAA and RIIA

[Anonymous Coward]

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)

Torrent trackers do not engage in copyright infringement. At worst, they engage in contributory infringement (they facilitate those who wish to engage in copyright infringement). The files hosted on the torrent tracker are *.torrent files, and that's all that they distribute.

And as to whether this review is a boon to the *AA, I think not. They are not lacking for targets of their lawsuits, they are lacking for time, money, and resources to pursue the myriad of potential infringers that are easily identified.

So I really don't see how posting a review of torrent sites changes anything.

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.

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:The best Torrent sites are private...

[Fordiman]

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