Mininova’s Torrent Downloads Double to 7 Billion in a Year
Written by Ernesto on January 05, 2009The BitTorrent popularity surge is still underway, with more users discovering that it’s the fastest way to transfer large files online. One of the most frequently visited torrent sites, Mininova, has seen the number of torrent downloads double from 3.5 billion to 7 billion during 2008, and this download rate is still increasing.
Mininova, founded in January 2005, soon became one of the most successful torrent sites. The site has grown steadily over recent months, and for a few weeks now the millions of daily users have been downloading well over 10 million torrents a day.
In 2008 the site passed several milestones, and in December Mininova broke a new record of 44.7 million unique visitors in one month. More users download more torrents, and just about every three to four months the site added another million torrent downloads to its counter. Today, just a few days into 2009, Mininova is close to recording the 7 billionth download, a double up compared to a year ago.
Mininova co-founder Niek told TorrentFreak that he expects this growth to continue in the new year. “Traffic is still growing according to Quantcast and Google Analytics. Unless something drastically changes, I see no reason why this will be different in 2009,” he commented.
Over the past months we’ve reported on the trend of more artists and publishers taking BitTorrent seriously, and Niek has noticed the same. “That’s definitely true,” he said. “We have almost reached the point of 1000 active CD publishers. We expect that free content distribution will play an increasingly important role in the music and video industry during the coming year.”
While existing Internet users are turning to BitTorrent at an increasing rate, most growth can be expected from rapidly developing countries such as India. With only 5 million broadband Internet subscribers, India is a relatively small player. However, the government plans to increase this number to 50 million by 2012, a 1000% increase, and we expect that many of them will be eager to try BitTorrent.
The exponential growth reported by Mininova and other torrent sites shows us that the BitTorrent hype is far from over. ISPs should brace themselves.
Previously: Campaign to Stop File-Sharers Being “Guilty Upon Accusation”
Next: Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent
30 Responses
One of the main reasons is their search engine is really really good.
I love thepiratebay and would any day of the week buy the guys who run TPB a beer if ever i bumped into them… but even though their are the most popular (and notorious) tracker their search sucks… really really sucks.
If i need something, I and most of my pals always head over to Mini, heck, even google sends you to mini rather than TPB most of the time..
In the end you may be downloading from tpb.. but theres a very good chance you got there via mini.
Its almost the google of torrent finding.
Good job mini… hope you double up again!
Cheers!
http://www.eZee.se
yeah the pirate bay has had a bad search algorithm since day 1. i believe they tried to rewrite the code like a year ago but the search still gives many many random results
May be because when you search in mininova, they only search in titles, unlike thepiratebay that searches in titles and description.
Mininova is what it is because of 1) nice web design 2) clean site (no fakes, etc) 3) the search method 4) the highlighting in the search is also great so on, so on
But, i have to say that i love both of them mini and tpb <3
The best way to find torrents is simple. Google it, what ever you are looking for plus torrent. DOes the job better than all the other trackers.
another x million mininova download story – yawn, excuse me while I take another extensive nap from torrent news.
Anyone but me think this is an incredibly sexy huge number? 7.000.000.000 downloads? That’s stunning.
Wow, that is truly amazing!
web-privacy.pro.tc
even tho i mainly use my private tracker if there was something old or obscure that i was looking for,i was always going to TPB, lol never even tried mini b4, an yes like others have said the search/results from tpb is random at best , guess gonna have to bookmark mini and give them a try
Mininova’s Way Of Leeching Torrent Downloads Double to 7 Billion in a Year With No Risk, Expense Or Upkeep Of Maintaining Their Own Tracker, Unless You Want To Upload Something Legal Then You Can Use Their Tracker.
I'm Not Too Impressed.
When searching The Pirate Bay just tick the box "search titles only" and it's very accurate. IMO Mininova is full of Malware, even more so than TPB.
"with more users discovering that it’s the fastest way to transfer large files online."
ROFL laughing … no seriously. Fair enough BT is the faster P2P network, hands down but that's still a lot slower than Usenet, FTP, DCC and HTTP downloads. Yes FTP, DCC and HTTP can vary in speeds if you dont know where to find good servers or operators that share connections in an appropriate manner amongst users – and to achieve this users must be queued very often. However, that still doesn't change the basic premise that they are faster.
As for Usenet, that's full speed all of the time with no waiting whatsoever – in terms of speed – and some rare content (however that works both ways certainly – but all Usenet content is the same speed…) – Usenet is vastly superior to any P2P. BT is great, but it's highly dependent on file popularity, seed to leech ratio and users connection speeds still (ie home connections).
So making that statement is just wrong.
"2) clean site (no fakes, etc)"
Erm, Mininova has many fakes and what's more I've noticed fake files uploaded to Mininova (using public trackers such as TPB of course) are not removed for a long, long time in comparison to TPB.
A much, much better way is to use Bit Che. This not only searches many public trackers but also the vast majority of private sites also – provided you can provide a valid login & pass and download the appropriate plugin from the website (the built-in plugins are old and often dont work as well or at all). The vast majority of the time downloading from private trackers will be many times faster – people are motivated to upload and be "potential seeds", ie. seed to leech ratio will usually be many times more than 1, whereas at public sites it's usually less than 1 … and it's also safer if you care about this.
Google does not index any private sites and also does not display the number of seeds & peers and arrange results according to other criteria either. Google also has non-torrent results interspersed.
Your way is simple but not the "best" at all. I recommend you download Bit Che as it's far superior.
If you check the "(search titles only)" in TPB, it will only search in titles, and exclude the discription..
The searching of description is somewhat beneficial sometimes, especially if you know a song name, but dont know the album's name.. hehe
And yeah, mini and TPB do make a really good combination.
Yeah, Mininova was the first torrent site I ever found, 3 and a half years ago thanks to a Google search, and it's the only one I have in my favorites list. I always go there first.
umm… why?
I don’t doubt Mininova do some big numbers for usage as it’s a nice and popular site, but I do wonder about their torrent download figures. My experience suggests you need to deduct around 75 hits for a download from the get-go to bring the number closer to reality. Sure, this won’t affect popular torrents much, but many of the unpopular torrents download numbers will be being grossly inflated if the numbers are not adjusted for this.
What those “75″ or so instant hits are on a torrent I don’t know. I’d take a guess at a good number of those being other torrent sites (ever noticed how a torrent uploaded to Mininova spreads like wildfire across a plethora of torrent sites?).
Still, nice site though, the best IMO.
Seems about the right time to voice my concern with Mininova.org
I've numerous times uploaded torrents to Mininova and regardless of how unpopular the content I uploaded seemed, I've always quickly gotten 30-60 downloads, while maybe only 2-5 people have been actually leeching from me (simultaneously uploading to btmon, tpb, btjunkie and such also).
I personally think the figures are doctored. I see my torrent file download count rising alot more than I see actually represented in peers in my uTorrent.
Usenet costs money
Good to see this sites growing. I still prefer the verified sign of Torrentz and then see where I end up. Mininova, TPB, as long as I get the torrent.
Just so you know if you search for the file you want followed by tpb in google it pretty much always finds what you want off of the piratebay ;)
When searching with the piratebay just tick the option "Only search titles" and you wont be getting random hits.
keep it up mininova and the piratebay… keep it up
Fuck mininova, I hope they get shut down soon
Fuckhead, Seedpeer invented the verified torrents. Torrentz is a crappy site anywayz.
Er … I don't get it. Do you not realise that after you have uploaded a full copy into the swarm clients can download the file without contacting your client?
You silly twat, lay off the cannabis and pain medication for gods sakes.
Well duh… so does internet and food. It's still faster than Bittorrent. No ones making you pay for it but if you do it's faster than Bittorrent.
hey hay alguien que me pueda hayudar a como usar utorrens , es que no puedo ver ninguna pelicula
My ISP shut my service off Thursday because WB sent them a letter telling them I had DL'd GRAN TORINO, which I had. Last year, HBO shut my service down for DL an ep of GENERATION KILL. I got both torrents from Mininova. Just letting you know that folks are watching. for me, I'm finished with the site and finished DL video.
dont use public for many but demon and mini the 2 i would use…
RIP SuprNova!
We hardly new ye! Now look what your spawn has grown into. Take that RIAA!
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