SUMOTorrent: The New BitTorrent Juggernaut?
Written by Ernesto on November 08, 2007In just a few months SUMOtorrent managed to grow from 0 to 350,000 visitors a day, which makes it one of the most widely used BitTorrent sites. Impressive statistics but how did they accomplish this, and what are their plans for the future? Let’s find out.
SUMOtorrent is currently ranked 1,052 on Alexa, which means that they are close to entering the list of 1000 most visited websites on the Internet. In addition, SUMOtorrent is running a much needed - as well as one of the biggest, BitTorrent trackers.
This is pretty exceptional if you take into account that the site only had a dozen visitors 6 months ago when it just started.
We are glad that the administrator of SUMOtorrent agreed to answer some of our questions, so we can learn a bit more about his success story.
TorrentFreak: How many visitors does SUMOTorrent have at the moment?
SUMO: SUMOTorrent is now getting about 350 000 daily unique visitors, while SUMOTracker is now tracking 2 million peers, and is probably the largest public BitTorrent tracker hosted on a single server! We recently launched a second public tracker that we hope will be used as much by BitTorrent users as the main tracker.
TorrentFreak: What did you do to grow this fast?
SUMO: I believe the reason why we grew so fast is experience, ideas and support of countless people!
TorrentFreak: So, with all the traffic you’re getting you must be driving a really expensive sports car now right?
SUMO: I don’t have a car but I advise you all to drive safely, put your safety belt on and respect speed limits.
Many webmasters do not communicate about money and torrents. Truth is that, just like any other popular site with high traffic, torrents sites make an income with 4 zeros, SUMOTorrent included. However, we’re not rich: at the end of the month, with all our expenses (hosting of 6 servers for SUMOTorrent/SUMOTracker), developers, partners, backup servers, services… we have actually just enough cash to purchase new servers next month. Our partners could tell you that we often ask them for a delay to pay them every month :p
We also support various sites and donate to them when we have some extra cash (Filesoup, IndianMP3 …)
TorrentFreak: Are you running the site on your own or do you have a team of moderators helping you out?
SUMO: We are running the site on our own and looking for moderators to help us removing the spam and fake torrents that get through our filters.
TorrentFreak: SUMOTorrent is one of the few BitTorrent sites that has their own tracker, do you think we need more public BitTorrent trackers?
SUMO: Of course we do need more public BitTorrent trackers! Many BitTorrent sites do not have their own tracker, and will tell you that it is to avoid legal troubles. I believe this is only an excuse. When you come to think about it, a public BitTorrent tracker generates a lot of traffic that cannot be monetized as it is not seen by anybody. SUMOTracker costs about $500 per month and we feel like this money is well spent as we are doing it for the community!
TorrentFreak: The Pirate Bay announced that they are working on a new BitTorrent protocol, what is your take on this?
SUMO: I have quite bad memories of the Suprnova/Exeem project, but I believe the SecureP2P project launched by PirateBay will be a great improvement to BitTorrent as it is based on experience of what is not working good in the current protocol and trying to improve it. They have received dozens of suggestions from users all around the world, and I wish the best to them in this enterprise.
We have contacted the head of this project and will provide them with any resources they might need to achieve it. SUMOTorrent will of course support the new protocol, promote it to our users and provide additional trackers on SUMOTracker for the new tracker protocol.
TorrentFreak: Can you tell us something about features you want to add to SUMOTorrent in the future?
SUMO: We will add more languages and buy new servers to scale site architecture with our growth. We will also work on content partnerships, and invite any filmmaker, music group or artist who is interested in sponsoring of his production and free distribution of his content through our site to contact us.
Just like PirateBay and Mininova, we would like to promote groups and help artists getting known through the power of peer-to-peer!
TorrentFreak: Do you have a message for all the anti-piracy organizations out there?
SUMO: Yes, take a look at the 100 first sites according to Alexa ranking! P2P and BitTorrent websites are here to stay, and they are the major means of online content distribution nowadays. This is a fact. Instead of trying to block the highway that leads to your customers, you should put your strategy into question. When the time will come that P2P sites will get better organized (and this time is soon, you know it) and ran by smart structures instead of simple individuals, you will understand you have missed the last opportunity you had to jump on the bandwagon of the digital revolution!
Meanwhile for all torrent users, we are happy to give you a free drive to where you want on www.sumotorrent.com :)
TorrentFreak: Thanks SUMO and good luck in the future!
Previously: Alleged MPAA Harrassment Causes aXXo / Pirate Bay Rift
Next: Prosecutor Announces Charges Against The Pirate Bay
76 Responses
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The site is down at the moment, crash?
DIGG effect. So much for being the next big thing… :)
‘BitTorrent Juggernaut’ is down already.
“Table ‘table_torrents’ is marked as crashed and should be repaired” 11.52 (gmt)
How will I get my daily dose of flashing pr0n ads now? *sob*
Looks like something the MPAA made.
“We are whining because Sumotorrent is a piece of crap and Ernesto is bigging it up like the second coming of jesus.”
Hilarious..
If he’s the fella @Jasper referred to, then yes, he’s a sleazy fake.
comedy: “Table ‘table_torrents’ is marked as crashed and should be repaired”
First time i have heard of sumotorrent, if you are legit i wish you the best of luck, we need more people helping the cause not sitting back and talking shit, yes your site has way to many ads, some are duplicates even, get rid of those or at least make them not as intrusive for the time being,
names of torrents are a bit long but that can be easily fixed, and the frontend of the site could use a touch up
and as for the MPAA and other enemys of the free world, they are everywhere trying to do us in, you can expect them to be on sumo, PB, mininova even right here. but so are we and we are many. if you are paranoid about them getting you then they have won, your mind is weak and has fallen victum to their tactics, either quit what your doing and get lost or grow a spine and stand up and fight.
Long live P2P!
Hey, am I the only one who uses Isohunt.com anymore?
Can anyone else show them some love?
After reading this thread it seems as though the amount of pop-ups and advertisements a site has is the factor most people have been using to determine a site’s credibility.
Your site disgusts me.
If you guys hate ads then use Adblock or something like that instead of insulting the site & its owner.
You guys should appreciate the fact that the site has come in the top 3 within 6 months. No site has made to that level in this short time.
at least theyre honest by naming this site sumo, it live up to its name its fat, slow and full of sh*t. all of the torrents ive ever seen on sumotorrent have had all negative comments
[quote comment="206953"]sumotorrent, another unsafe unfiltered tracker for mediasentry to attach their industrial volume tracking peers
sumotorrent, ensuring 200,000 torrents, almost 1/5th of all alive torrents, are unsafe and tracked by anti-p2p groups
sumotorrent, designed and built to rape the filesharing scene of advertising revenue without a single regard to the safety of filesharers[/quote]
And what’s safer? Private sites? Sorry, no, never have been, doubtfully ever will.
Also, all you people commenting about adverts, and going on about adblock, sounds like you’re using FireFox (I’m very sorry for you). I do Think it’s ironic that you are using the one plugin which actually hinders the development of the program it runs on. (If you didn’t know, FireFox is ad-supported)
I’ve liked Torrentfreak for a while, following the RSS with excitement, but this (and the previous Sumotorrent article) make the site seem a bit fishy.
I’m not accusing you of anything, Ernesto, but at some point every owner of a popular site will have to make a choice of running a nice site with integrity (and maybe slowly make SOME money of), or sell out for fast and easy cash.
Perfect example: The Stile Project. It used to be funny and entertaining, but greed made Stile say “fuck you” to all his regular readers.
lame site and horrible design. I never bother with it. Mininova for me! :)
[quote comment="207484"]
And what’s safer? Private sites? Sorry, no, never have been, doubtfully ever will.
[/quote]
i agree, private sites are the worse security risk because of their tracking ways
ipfiltering in the kernel is the safe way to go. every tracker should filter out the evil ip’s logging downloader activity in the swarms. if the downloader then uses SafePeer or PG and disables the evil DHT there is no way the swarm activity can be logged by evil ip’s
it is a 15 minute task to install ipfiltering on a tracker using iptables and a BlueTack blocklist. every tracker should do it and put an end to the logging of swarms
it is not like sumo grew organically over a 5 year period and is managing legacy systems
it is a well funded project build
they could have taken 5% of their resources and committed them to making a safe place to share
if i was the “”AA i would fund a tracker like denis.stalker to support my tracking peer operations. sumo is no different, it does the same, it provides the **AA with a free platform to nail filesharers
we expect more from new trackers. stop being so fukin naive or damn greedy. give filesharers a safe place to share
Guys Sumotorrent is not a MPAA’s site. Its just a torrent site run by a bittorrent coder. He was the man behind TorrentTrader, Bittorrent-Support & things like that.
It needs work, for sure, but I’ve seen many worse sites around. At only six months of age, it’s still a baby: give it time to grow up!
it is not good enuf knowing what we all know about anti-p2p technology to erect a juggernaut tracker minus the correct systems to protect filesharers
as admitted above, they take advertizing revenue in the 10’s of thousands of dollars a week. yet they cannot spend a dime on protecting their users
sumo are royally taking the piss
i am not alone and a growing number of trackers are implementing ipfiltering to block anti-p2p peers from joining the swarms. ironically, it is the big boyz who are ignoring this technology
where is the fukin leadership in filesharing? it is from the grassroot trackers who dispise the monolithic oldschool trackers for being so fukin niave and money centric
filesharing has always been about freedom of information and exchange of data. filesharing was hijacked by the Americans who sought to build their business models on the copyright content from the labor of others. THAT is what got filesharing a bad name
now PISSboy turns up and does it all wrong again, reinforcing the arguments against filesharing, making it more difficult for the genuine proponents of freedom of data
enough people know the guy to give him away to the French authorities. weed the weak from our ranks
[quote comment="206908"]Hello guys,
First I would like to thank Ernersto for his interview. He is I think the only journalist close enough to all bittorrent webmasters to write always interesting articles.
Then, I have read carefully all your comments and you are right. We need to improve the quality of the torrents on the site (though we are already using PirateBay fake list and other solutions to detect the fake torrents), that is why we are looking for a team of moderator.
We will also improve the lisibility of the site, we have some issues with torrents with very long names.
We have also several ads. Probably too much according to some of you. We try our best every month to negotiate with our ads partners feature less intrusive ads. We will remove some of them as soon as we have enough to support the growth of the site and have enough servers.
Finally, even though some of you do not like the site, we are really proud of where we have gone in 6 months, and offering one of the largest tracker (which has a 100% uptime) is a great achievement.
SUMOTracker is now hosting 200 000 torrents, almost 1/5th of all alive torrents! We want to continue providing the service.
Thank you all for your suggestions, and let us know if you want to help us and become moderator at SUMO!
SUMO
http://www.sumotorrent.com/quote
Since demonoid is down i decided to try out sumotorrent. I have seen their tracker in several torrents gotten off mininova.
I must say that sumotorrent is the most crappy site i’ve ever seen. YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF SUMOCREW!
Jeez, could you possibly make the site ANYMORE annoying in terms of ads and SHIT?
I hope you crash and burn. You do not deserve any attention at all, sites like yours will be the downfall of bittorrent. Please kill -9 [pid of apache]
I don’t care what anyone thinks, but sumotorrent is entrapment, its a scam. Out of nowhere this site appears, copying the exact same torrents all the other major sites have and suddenly they fly up. Even before this article, I have a feeling sumotorrent is a giant ploy to trap torrent users for downloading illegal stuff.
think about it
awesome someone agrees it looks like something the mpaa made, same with wareztorrent. what a dead give away, and file-sharing isn’t about freedom or about doing what is right. It’s about stealing something your to much of a pussy to do yourself, to cheap to buy. How many of you people would go into a store and buy a cd?
And how many of you people felt the same way about the dvds,games and cds you bought before filesharing was around. Because nothing could have stopped you from stealing them before.
I meant to say
How many of you would go into a store and steal a cd?
I visited this site, it seems to be full of nothing. I think they link popular searches with fake torrent names. JUNK SITE!!!
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