TorrentFreak

• Ernesto
• February 14, 2008
• 133
• bit-tunes,
  bittorrent,
  looktorrent,
  pizzatorrent,
  sharebyte
• Print

BitTorrent’s popularity is still growing, and new sites are launched every day. Unfortunately it is impossible to feature all the new sites here, so we decided to post a selection of BitTorrent sites that look promising, or offer something new.

PizzaTorrent

PizzaTorrent is a meta-search engine, inspired by the enormous success of another site we introduced last month, YouTorrent. The site has a similar look and feel as YouTorrent, but it also includes some unique features. One of the most significant differences is that it sorts the torrents by category. In the sidebar you can also click on one of the indexed sites to perform a direct search.

The search results are presented in a clean way and ordered by rank, which is the output of a formula that looks at the torrent name, keywords, date added, number of seeds and seeds vs. peers. The administrator of PizzaTorrent told TorrentFreak that his site is indeed based on the YouTorrent concept, but that he will continue to add more unique features.

Bit-Tunes

Bit-Tunes is a BitTorrent /iTunes mashup based on the popular blog platform WordPress. The site collects information from iTunes on both the newly released and most popular albums available on the iTunes store. It fetches the album cover in high-resolution from online stores such as Amazon, and matches every album dynamically with torrent downloads available on various BitTorrent sites.

The Bit-Tunes administrator told TorrentFreak: The purpose of the site is to discover great music albums and new artists, and download music DRM-free without the need to go through the iTunes Store or own an iPod. I have a bunch more ideas of which contextual information can be added to every album (buy it on Amazon, preview / listen online), to provide an even better user experience.

LookTorrent

LookTorrent is another BitTorrent meta-search engine that was launched recently. The difference with PizzaTorrents is that search results are presented in tabs, similar to Torrent-Finder. Each tab shows the search results of one BitTorrent site, and you can select which sites you want to search. In addition, LookTorrent allows users to rate the sites and it displays search suggestions at the bottom of every results page.

ShareByte

ShareByte is different from most other search engines because it is a community driven site where users add and edit the torrents. At the moment is is still a bit low on content, but the idea might appeal to people who like to participate. All the files are categorized and links to subtitles, video trailers, IMDB ratings and more are included, or can be added by users.

In addition, the site offers some useful features to registered users, as they can add torrents to their favorites and rate the audio and video quality of the files.

As said before, BitTorrent meta-search engines can be really useful, but they are useless if all the sites they index host the same .torrent files. A bit more diversity might be a good idea, especially in the long term.

Do you know any other new BitTorrent sites that are worth visiting? Leave a comment and share it with us…

PizzaTorrent PizzaTorrent is a meta-search engine, inspired by the enormous success of another site we introduced last month, YouTorrent. The site has a similar look and feel as YouTorrent, but...