Happy Birthday Mininova, 4 Years Young Today
Written by enigmax on January 15, 2009Many torrent sites come and go, but few are as large or enduring as Mininova. Today, the BitTorrent giant celebrates its 4th birthday, after the first public version of the site went live in January 2005. For those who work hard to fulfill their dreams, from little acorns, mighty oak trees grow.
After the unfortunate demise of the mighty Suprnova in December 2004, a large gap appeared in the BitTorrent community. Five Dutchmen – Erik, Jos, Matthijs, Niek and Rob – were inspired by the successes of Suprnova, and on January 15 2005, Mininova was born. Hosted on a basic DSL connection, it couldn’t handle the massive surge in traffic when Sloncek’s baby went down. But help was at hand.
Gottfrid, aka Anakata of The Pirate Bay offered to become Mininova’s temporary host, with the site moving again later on to be hosted by Gary Fung of isoHunt. As the site continued to develop, Mininova needed their own servers and in the years to follow its growth has been nothing short of spectacular.
From a standing start in 2005, by mid-2007 Mininova had entered the list of Top 100 most popular sites on the entire Internet with 2 million daily visitors, an amazing achievement.
Then, at the tender age of just three years old, Mininova was breaking more records. By January 2008, the site was serving 3 million daily visitors who were downloading almost 10 million .torrent files every day. In February the site introduced torrent streaming and by the end of that month had served over 4 billion .torrents.
The innovations didn’t stop there. In March last year, Mininova began its Beta testing of BitTorrent powered video streaming. The new streaming feature allowed users to watch videos instantly, streamed from .torrent files. The Open Source “Swarmplayer” was developed in collaboration with the Tribler team from the Technical University Delft and Free University Amsterdam.
In April 2008, the BitTorrent community realized just how big Mininova had become, after technical problems took down the site, resulting in massive traffic surges on other indexers. Although the site quickly returned, May was disappointing, as anti-piracy outfit BREIN flexed its muscles and threatened the site – filter, or else. However, by the end of the month it became clear that Mininova’s popularity was far from on the wane, as it served up its 5 billionth torrent.
Niek, CEO of Mininova, told Torrentfreak: “The growth rate is above every expectation. Mininova’s download numbers almost doubled this year – and the number of visitors grew almost just as hard. We are excited about the coming year and its challenges: stay tuned for some important announcements in the coming months.”
Just a few days ago, Mininova announced it had delivered its 7 billionth torrent, which left everyone wondering where it was all going to end. Today, the BitTorrent behemoth reached its 4th birthday and like someone else with a birthday today, the dream appears to have turned into reality.
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26 Responses
Many happy returns of the day, Mininova!
Happy B-Day!!!!
Well, I do not use this website often, but I guess they provide a service to many other people. It is possible that the MAFIAA may deserve to be dead already.
Écrasez l'Infâme! Crush the infamous thing!
Roze
Happy Birthday MiniNova
Http://burn-blue.com
Not a site I use often, but obviously many, many other people do. :)
Happy birthday!
Happy Birthday. Looking forward to many more of them :)
http://www.fetchmp3.com
Happy B-Day !! and thanks for the last 4 years, May there be many more to come :)
Happy Birthday Mini!
You're one i use nearly every day so hope you haev many more to come!
Cheers!
http://www.eZee.se
Well, I do not use this website often, but I guess they provide a service to many other people. Now, it is possible that the MAFIAA may ought to be sent to hell now.
Well, I do not use this website often, but I guess they provide a service to many other people. Now, it is possible that the MAFIAA may ought to be sent to hell now. It is possible that they may deserve to be dead already.
Roze
Way to go, Mininova. mustangx, couldn't have said it better, mate. =]
Hardly use it nowadays, but they helped me with my first steps into torrenting.
Gratz Mininova, and nice work to everyone who helped create and maintain it.
And many many more ^^
Happy B-Day.. :):):)
So would "Maxinova" now be a more appropriate name? There isn't a single thing "mini" about the site anymore…
Happy birthday Mininova!
Although I like TPB, their search algorithm is quite different than Mininova; which I like.
happy birthday and keep up the good job, hang in there. There are a lot of people as me that are really happy and grateful for finding you there on the net. Brokentoe34
Hope it's you're last B-day, die already you corrupt BREIN cooperators!
jake… why don`t you shut fuck up your babbling mouth damm asshole?? long life to the torrents servers!!!
Mininova totally rocks. I cant believe its been 4 years already!
privacy-center.be.tc
i was jk i love mininova there the best.
Jan 05? Wow. I discovered Mininova back when I first started torrenting in Jun 05. I'd thought the site was a bit older than that..
Happy Birthday
Feliz Cumpleaños
?????????
happy birthday….
http://musikmaniacs.blogspot.com
Happy birthday Mininova! Gonna get my naruto and bleach now. :)
I remember the day supernova was out of existense. It broke my heart, but mininova came to the rescue.
Happy B-Day!
Happy belated birthday Mininova! :D
Great site.
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