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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?
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')
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.
My work here is dung.
No one really cares what the site looks like when they're trying to grab their 0-day moviez.
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.
Meta will eat itself
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?
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.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
Are the ones with the best warez, pr0n and movies. Who gives a crap about looks?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
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
Meta will eat itself
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.
My work here is dung.
... 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.
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)
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
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.
-- You must be yay-high to rule the world.
Your analogy of insects is interesting: it does appear that bugs which are ugly or make us instinctively go 'yuck' are also those we'd want to avoid because they are parasites or spread diseases. A picture of a tick or flea evokes feelings of ugliness at some instinctual level.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Iam surprised they didnt write about the Big daddy torrent tracker site Demonoid.com
Wincopy
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.
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!"
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
Ugly? Those websites look like the sixtine chappel comparing to http://www.newpct.com/index.php/ My choice is adblocked isohunt anyway.
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 often added confusion, and removed clarity.
Many have begun to think that a similar paradigm should be applied to web sites. This has particularly been the case in the Web 2.0 area, where large images of buttons take up three or four times the screen space that a more traditional linked image or text link would have consumed. Many people have become mislead into thinking that if a GUI isn't colourful and doesn't have large gaps between components and data, then it's a "poor" GUI.
This revolution in GUI design moved on to Microsoft, a few years late, of course. The default theme of Windows Vista has attempted to copy the GUI of Mac OS X in many respects, and thus has copied many of the same problems. The taskbar is an excellent example. It has this white shading along the top that adds no functional benefit, and actually makes the taskbar more distracting and difficult to interpret quickly.
With the latest release of iTunes 7, we actually are seeing Apple backtrack to where they were in the past. There are hints that the bubbly GUI will be a way of the past. I know there are many professionals using Apple systems that would be very pleased for a simple, NeXTSTEP-like interface that allows them to focus on getting their work done. We realize that bubbly GUIs and flashy shading don't help us get work done, and so we'd rather see them gone. It will be intriguing to see who prevails: those who advocate flashy, distracting GUIs, or those who want clean, crisp interfaces that promote usability.
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).
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
. . . has been slashdotted. So get off it slashdotters, it's my site and I need it. ;-)
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
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)?
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
In my opinion the best site for new releases is isoHunt. There are no fake files on isoHunt and isoHunt torrents usually have many reliable trackers cross-referenced from BitTorrent sites across the internet.
For older files Mininova is the best. It has almost 150000 files. Everyone can upload, but there are good moderators who remove fake files. The site has a very fast, CSS-based layout without HTML tables.
I don't use private sites, because it's very hard to have a high ratio on those sites if you don't download 0-day releases. On public sites I have a 1.0-1.1 ratio after 3 hours of seeding. It's impossible on private sites because there are 8 times more seeders than leechers.
M'lud - we move for summary dismissal on medical grounds. The accused suffers from not only an article deficiency, but also a form of schizophrenia known as fragmentation. If we examine the statement from by the Grammar Police this is really self-evident.
Their index is comprised of only torrents they index on their tracker, but don't worry because there the tracker has almost 350,000 torrents.
Also: -
Torrent Portal is famous for there a large following of faithful uploaders
The defence rests, whilst awaiting the completion of the defendants fragment upon return of their original personality.
(oops - please insert this apostrophe (') in the appropriate location in previous reply - the precise location left as an exercise for the reader).
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.
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?
--
make install -not war
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 what is a botch job that just meets the needs of the job. Usually it is the former that turns out to be the most robust, the easiest to use or maintain, the furthest-reaching in its unanticipated capabilities. The latter will tend to fail under slight changes in function or environment. (Sorry, I'm trying to generalise here).
So, an expert in their field learns to be attracted to solutions that are elegant and practical. They learn to instinctively find beautiful those implementations which will work best. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as the parent poster said, and those who spend a lot of time looking at solutions in their particular field will find beauty in function.
Therefore, the aphorism holds quite true. If someone hacks together a product, site, program that looks shoddy to him but apparently meets the specification, they instinctively know that it isn't great and will, in future, cause problems. The quote, I suspect, is meant to encourage those who work in such capacities to have more concern for the "aesthetics" of their product - by which it means "does it look good to you?".
To go back to Hawking, I think he'd agree: if an equation explaining some aspect of the universe looks ugly as hell, it's probably not quite right. This is a source of ongoing debate (is it likely that the universe is based on simple truths, or are we just making particularly good sense of chaos? Can we ever find a Grand Unifying Theory that works?). He no doubt does not see himself as an attractive guy, but that's not the issue - his work is.
When you talk about finding beauty in creatures, these are not our creations and so your comparison is not really relevant. To an entomologist, cockroaches are beautiful because they work so well - not because it's pretty. For years the famous E=mc^2, although a meaningless mess to many, was seen as so beautiful and elegant because, for such a simple equation, it allowed one to extrapolate so much understanding about the way the universe works.
The principle isn't infallible, but it is a very useful insight nonetheless for experts in their fields.
Meta will eat itself
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 interface that highlights important information in brighter colors and larger sizes, and uses empty space effectively to structure information, is both pretty and user-friendly.
Ten most used bittorrent
BTJunkie
BitTorrent.com
Bushtorrent & Torrentreactor
isoHunt
Meganova
Mininova
The Pirate Bay
Torrent Portal
TorrentSpy
Torrentz
I use www.demoniod.com alot, however this is an invite only member site. I also use www.torrentscan.com which is a search pages that search all the popular sites inculding many on the top 10.
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..
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?
Meta will eat itself
...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...
You don't READ the library. You don't even read the cover. You read the book.
If the book is horribly laid out with gray text on black paper so it is hard to read... refer to the "quote of the moment"
There is more to aesthetics than just being pretty.
Beauty is truly in the eye of the tiger
He isn't suggesting that you judge a book buy it's cover, he is suggesting you judge a book buy it's contents. If the text of a book is jarring and hard to read, it is a pretty good indicator that there may be other problems with it, like with the reasoning within. Unpleasing text -> red flag.
Re your example, Steven Hawking's body is wrong, and we partially describe this by noting that it isn't particularly aesthetically pleasing. Fortunately, his disease hasn't affected his mind, and he has been incredibly productive, and it seems strange to describe his body as the cover of his work.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
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.
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
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 is not paper and can be viewed at any resolution by any browser, making exact placement impossible.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
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.)
I always thought Steve was rather lovely...and have you heard the man rap?! He has skills.
I really liked on Torrentspy how you could just click the little download icon next to the torrent listing and bypass having to go in to the torrent data page and clicking the download link. They took that away like a year ago and I want it back. :)
:)
The problem is that Firefox won't save place on the page when you click the back button (on Torrentspy anyway) and so you end up having to open up a new tab/page just to go in and click download. That sucks!
Sorry, I've been wanting to bitch about this for a year and now I can. So there...
I was even contemplating writing a small Firefox extension to do just that, but I only know Perl/PHP/Bash Oh well.
Also doesnt the fact that this 'study' is just some blog post give pause to the editors?
How about the fact that the "editor's pick" is a random bt site that noone has ever heard of.
1. Make website btjunkie.com
2. Write blog 'comparing' it to other bt sites.
3. ???
4. Profit!
I find it hard to believe that this is a reputable source when they abbreviate "The Pirate Bay" as TBP!
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
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.
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 old computer game manuals and games that would make you look up a word at a particular location on a page of the manual to continue, or which came with spell books and maps for use in the game. And, as with DRM, it often makes it unusable for even its intended non-infringing use.
And it seems a lot of sites revel in such design choices, perhaps thinking it keeps them on the "down low". "Nothing to see here, don't consider attempting to highlight all." That, along with putting files in passworded archives with cryptic names you're expected to solve to determine not only what is in the archive but also the password, tech lower than captchas to keep them under the radar of the copyright cartel.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Have illegal content.
Why is Slashdot encouraging piracy?
I am the maverick of Slashdot
I'm "sorry"
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
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.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
www.torrentscan.com searches every site you want. I find it very useful.
Wasn't him. T'was Thom Yorke arseing about with similar kit.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
You took the subtle insult out of my fingers.
Someone hates these cans.
Hand over your badge and your blue pencil, you're off the case.
Science fiction for grown-ups...
Although snakes and earth worms and spiders look ugly as hell, I still love what they do.
Well that just makes you a weirdo, doesn't it? Snakes and spiders are officially employed in scaring the bejeezus out of people. If a snake isn't scaring some poor schmuck senseless, it's slacking on the job.
Based on this analysis, what part of "what they do" have you fallen in love with?
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.
Comment of the year
How can you possibly compare all the major torrent sites without reviewing their RSS feeds? These days RSS feeds are essential to automate television downloading (broadcatching), and I can't believe they didn't even bother to mention them.
The two most popular browsers (Azureus and uTorrent) both support RSS feeds. However with uTorrent you may have to filter your feeds through RSSatellite in order for feeds from mininova, torrentspy, and some others to work properly.
He certainly is "wrong" physically, which is the same way in which he is not aesthetically pleasing.
If his scientific papers were written in a sloppy, irregular, busy, and otherwise unaesthetically pleasing, it would probably be an indicator that they were not well thought out, and therefore that they were likely wrong.
...because "hacker" sounds way sexier than "code drone."
I would have modded you funny, but I've already commented on this thread.
That certainly is one dead straw man, though. You killed it expertly.
...because "hacker" sounds way sexier than "code drone."
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 brilliant...we as the public would probaly not go as much out of our way to slow down for the less than optimal interface to him.....we'd probably look more towards a lessor equippped model internally, but, with a better interface.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
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.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
have illegal content. Only LINKS to get illegal content. The bittorrent users themselves are the ones hosting the illegal content.
Meh.
"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?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Well, let's see...
This blog has exactly one entry, this comparison. The site address is btcompare.blogspot.com. It was made only to post this article and get it on news conglomeration sites like Digg and SlashDot. It mentions a BitTorrent tracking site few have heard of, but is apparently the most complete and popular one in the world.
What are the chances this WASN'T done by someone involved with BTJunkie?
Pretty slim.
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
VIVA1023.com | Political Fashion.
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.
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there. - Will Rogers
they don't list the one I use... is that selfish? YUP!
Oh the irony of your sig with this post.
And this site has a fair go at searching through all the best BT sites - http://torrent-finder.com/index.wld
But why is it that so many torrent sites are so ugly?
:-)
You mean like, as ugly as Slashdot before three months ago?
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
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?
I think that, according to the GP reasoning at least, "flowers and curves and ponies" would just end up looking ugly anyway, precisely because they are wrong, whilst a logical and flowing design would inherently be aesthetically pleasing.
> 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.
More often than not, the ability to create a pretty & straight-forward GUI comes with the ability to create pretty & straight-forward code.
For a good GUI one has to abstract the task and then re-concretise it. For good code both is essential too, but for Spaghetti code abstracting is sufficient. That's why Spaghetti coders seldomly put good GUIs in front of their code.
Software made by teams are a completely different story though.
Marc
Hrm, there are two ways to go from here, either a Simpsons quote, "Lisa, the blues isn't about making yourself feel better, it's about making other people feel sad", or "At least it's not as bad as Anal Cunt making a song called "Connor Clapton committed suicide because his father's music sucked so much" or similar.