Today’s report is based on data from over 17,221 unique users in a few dozen public BitTorrent swarms, collected by the Tribler P2P research team at Delft University of Technology.

The results in the table below show the market share for each individual client. In common with our previous reports, only 5 clients reached the 1% threshold, the remaining 14 that were encountered are grouped in the ‘other’ category. Some clients were not identified by libTorrent (rakshasa) and those ended up in the unknown ‘category’.

The changes in market share compared to our September report are also included, and these show some interesting trends. First of all, uTorrent extended its user base and now has a massive 60 percent market share. Vuze, BitComet and BitTorrent’s Mainline client all lost market share.

Transmission, on the other hand, keeps on growing. Its market share increased 23 percent and might take over BitComet’s fourth place soon. More on this in our December report.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Today we present our second report based on data from over 165,000 unique users in more than 400 public BitTorrent swarms. The data for this BitTorrent client comparison is collected by a researcher known as ‘xXx’ of the Tribler P2P research team at Delft University of Technology.

The results in the table below show the market share for each individual client. In common with the June report, only 5 clients reached the 1% threshold, the remaining 20 that were encountered are grouped in the ‘other’ category. Some clients were not identified by libTorrent (rakshasa) and those ended up the the unknown ‘category’.

The changes in market share compared to our June report are also included, and these show some interesting trends. First of all, uTorrent kept its dominant lead and even extended its market share to 56.81 percent. BitComet – ranked fourth again – is this month’s loser with a drop of 38 percent, falling from 6.50 to 4.71 percent market share.

On the winning side we see gains for Transmission and Vuze. Transmission’s market share increased to 44 percent and may move up a few spots if it maintains this growth rate. More on this in our October report.

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Today we present a more robust report based on data from over 150,000 unique users in more than 400 public BitTorrent swarms. The data for this BitTorrent client comparison is collected by a researcher known as ‘xXx’ of the Tribler P2P research team at Delft University of Technology. The research team will continue to supply TorrentFreak with bi-monthly updates so we can discover new trends and shifts in the usage of the different clients.

The results in the table below give the market share for each individual client. Only 5 clients reached the 1% threshold, the remaining 19 that were encountered are grouped in the ‘other’ category. Some clients were not identified by libTorrent (rakshasa) and those ended up the the unknown ‘category’.

Both uTorrent and the third placed mainline client are developed by BitTorrent Inc, meaning that the company holds an impressive two thirds of the market. The only main contender at the moment is Vuze, formerly known as Azureus, with nearly 17 percent. BitComet, which used to be a major contender, is in fourth place with just 6.5 percent.

The data also gives us more insight into the size of the BitTorrent ‘network’. In December we reported that uTorrent had 28 million unique users a month, and based on this figure that might have grown even higher in the recent months. It is safe to say that there are roughly 50 million active BitTorrent users on the Internet.

It will be interesting to see how the market share of the clients changes over the coming months. Will uTorrent be able to keep its dominant lead? What will happen to Transmission’s market share when they release their Windows version? Will there be any new clients to compete with the top three? Lots of questions that we hope to answer in the future.

Stay tuned!

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We’ve restricted the results to a few of the most used clients plus ’seedbox’ for the hardcore torrenters. If you’re not using one of these, please let us know what your preferred BitTorrent client is in the comments.

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StudioHD is owned and operated by Vuze Inc. and was silently integrated into one of the latest releases. Its network currently offers over 250 videos that can be downloaded with BitTorrent once the user has signed up for a subscription.

The current rates are $24.99 for a month or $149.99 annually and there’s a three day trial available for $3.99. In comparison, The Pirate Bay’s section dedicated to similar HD videos lists 600 titles that can be downloaded for free – even with Vuze.

BitTorrent and adult entertainment go hand in hand, so to speak. When Bram Cohen, the inventor of the protocol wanted to test his application in the wild, he used adult content to do so. Even today, a pretty significant portion of all BitTorrent transfers are porn related, although streaming sites have taken over a fair chunk of this part of the market.

Vuze’s porn section fully integrates with the regular BitTorrent client and offers videos from MC-Nudes, Mac & Bumble, Xisty, Walter Bosque, David Nudes, LSG, Digital Desire, to name just a few model agencies. They promise to add fresh content to the network regularly.

Judging from the advertisements on some BitTorrent sites, and MediaDefender’s porn marketing experience, there is money to be made in this particular area. Some will argue it’s one of the reasons the Internet was invented.

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In response to a recent survey where 72% of Vuze users indicated they own a portable hard drive, the developers have now rolled out a portable version of their client, so that people can carry it around on a flash drive or external hard disk.

In order to get it to work on systems that don’t have Java installed, Vuze to Go contains a virtual operating system in addition to the regular Vuze application. Vuze teamed up with a company called Ceedo who developed the ‘virtualization’ technology. This partnership does come with some downsides though.

First of all, the Vuze to Go client costs $9.99, which is quite unusual for a BitTorrent client. Vuze’s Director of Marketing Chris Thun told TorrentFreak that they were required to charge for the new application, and that the price tag was unavoidable.

“We’ve invested in creating a portable solution that has an entirely different ease-of-use relative to any other solution in the market. We believe that if we’re solving a real problem in an elegant way, our users will be willing to pay for it,” he said.

Although TorrentFreak was assured that the core Vuze application will always remain free, one of the downsides of teaming up with Ceedo is that the portable version of Vuze is not open source like the main client. “The Vuze application bundled into Vuze To Go is still open source. However, the Ceedo virtualization package is not open source,” Thun explained to TorrentFreak.

A free trial of Vuze to Go is available for those who want to try it out. It’s pretty much identical to the regular client and it ran pretty smoothly in our tests. uTorrent users who want to go portable don’t need a separate application.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The BitTorrent client has added a new feature that integrates Vuze with several media devices. It allows users to automatically convert and transfer downloaded videos to iTunes, and stream the files to the Xbox 360 and PS3.

“With today’s release, we’re unlocking HD content and giving it wings to get from the computer to the other screens in our lives: TV and Mobile,” Vuze CEO Gilles BianRosa told TorrentFreak. “We think this is a big deal because a large majority of our users actually have these devices at home. Also, consumers want to control and own their content, an ‘Open Home Theater’, if you will.”

Vuze currently supports Apple devices including the iPhone and the iPod. The PS3 and Xbox 360 are the two gaming consoles that integrate with Vuze as well. More devices may be added in the future but no decisions have yet been made on which ones, TorrentFreak was told. In a recent poll, most Vuze users indicated that iPhone/iPod support was most wanted.

Once device support is turned on in Vuze, users can drag and drop downloaded video onto their device of choice. Vuze will then convert the video into the appropriate format and add it to the device’s library.

For iTunes, Vuze will import the video into your iTunes library so it can be transferred to your iPhone, iPod or Apple TV. For the PS3 and Xbox 360, Vuze will stream the videos from your PC or Mac directly to your game console.

The device support is a great feature for users who want to have an easy all-in-one solution that not only downloads video, but also makes it ready to play on other devices. Although Vuze has been focusing mainly on video lately, the client can still download other content as well.

It is good to see that Vuze is using the feedback from its users to improve their client, although it is impossible to please everyone and some may still prefer a more lightweight client. That said, the Vuze all-in-one solution will especially appeal to novice BitTorrent users, but even for the most die-hard users the new features will make a great addition.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The record labels argue that the Vuze and the others are knowingly distributing software with the purpose to permit unauthorized access to copyrighted works. In essence they are saying that everything, or every application which allows a user to share files, will be indeed used for illegal purposes. In contrast, in the US, companies that don’t encourage their users to commit copyright infringement with their applications, are not acting illegally.

SPPF had already sued the various companies and organizations last year, but until now it has been unclear whether the US based companies behind the applications could be prosecuted under French law. A French court has now ruled that this is indeed possible, which means that they can proceed to court.

Recent French legislation which inspired the labels to go after the P2P companies, suggests that all P2P applications must have a feature to block the transfer of unauthorized copyright works. The clients that are sued by SPPF obviously don’t have such a feature. In fact, it is questionable whether it would be technically possible to develop such a filter. Nevertheless, SPPF demands it, and is claiming millions of dollars in damages for lost revenue.

Vuze CEO Gilles BianRosa stated in a response to TorrentFreak, “While we appreciate the intent of the new French law, we believe SPPF’s complaint is misguided. Vuze is dedicated to the distribution of legitimate content using new technology. In that sense, our interests are aligned with the interests of all content owners, including SPPF’s members, against piracy.”

“We are disappointed that SPPF has taken this approach, given that our business is dedicated to the distribution of legitimate content,” BianRosa added. “SPPF’s claims against Vuze are simply wrong. The Vuze business complies fully with both French and American law. The recent ruling of the French Court was solely on a jurisdictional issue, not on any merits, and we believe it is in error.”

Interestingly, SPPF is also going after Sourceforge, the open source development website, because it hosts the P2P application Shareaza. Putting aside the discussion on the responsibilities of application developers for their users activities, the decision to go after SourceForge for hosting a application that can potentially infringe, is stretching credibility beyond all bounds”

Meanwhile, Vuze has appealed the decision. Separately, the company is suing SPPF for defamation based upon several false and harmful statements made by SPPF about Vuze. A different French Court has denied SPPF’s attempt to derail those claims recently , and is allowing the defamation lawsuit to proceed.

If SPPF succeeds in their case against organizations running the four P2P applications, FTP software and Internet browsers might be next, if they don’t go after Ubuntu and other operating systems first. Perhaps it is even better to shut down the Internet entirely.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

With the latest release, 4.0, Vuze once again introduces quite a few changes. The difference this time is that they emphasize more on the BitTorrent experience than their Vuze Network. The UI is more lightweight, less cluttered, and should appeal to both novices and hardcore BitTorrent users (old UI is still supported).

The most interesting change they made is to include BitTorrent search in the application. This allows users to search all their favorite BitTorrent sites from within the application. Mininova and BTjunkie are included by default, but any site can be added to the search, including private BitTorrent trackers.

We had the chance to discuss some of the major updates to the client with Vuze CEO, Gilles BianRosa.

TF: What was the reason to update the user interface of the client, and how is this new release an improvement to its predecessors?

Gilles: Our new UI has been directly inspired by the feedback of our users, who told us loud and clear that our previous UI was confusing and a little schizophrenic—with core torrent functionality they loved, and new features bolted on in odd places. So we’ve done a few things.

First and foremost, we’ve tried to have the application reflect our core functionality, and that’s what you’ll see across the top of the global toolbar: Find, Download, and Play. Second, you’ll see an intuitive left-nav framework that users have responded to extremely well, since it provides direct and persistent access to all of the product features. And finally, you’ll see improved category navigation within the Vuze HD Network, to enable our users to browse directly to the type of content that interests them.

In terms of functionality, there are two key things users will appreciate in this release. First, there’s the new subscriptions, and second, there’s now private tracker login support for the meta-search functionality that we launched back in June.

TF: How do these new subcriptions work, and how are they different from the regular RSS feature most BitTorrent clients have?

Gilles: The new subscription feature enables users to request that specific content be sent to them automatically. Just click the orange Subscriptions button associated to content in your Library. You can set your subscriptions to download automatically, or simply to notify you when new items are available.

The big innovation here is that these subscriptions are initially created by users (usually power users) and then made available to everyone. This removes entirely the complexity associated with RSS for torrents, which tend to return lots of unwanted or duplicate results. Just click Subscribe!

TF: The latest release seems to offer an “all in one” solution where users can search, download and play content. Do you believe this approach will appeal to both advanced and new users?

Gilles: For the uninitiated, the BitTorrent ecosystem is a confusing one. In order to get up and running, a person has to find a tracker site, choose and download a torrent client, download a video player, and then figure out how each one works and how they all work together. For the new user who isn’t shown how it works, it’s almost impossible to figure out.

So, for new users, we’ve created an all-in-one BitTorrent client, that enables them to Find, Download, and Play high quality and HD content, all in one easy-to-use application. We think advanced users will like it too, since Vuze has all of the features it’s known for, plus some great new functionality like torrent meta-search with support for private trackers, and Subscriptions. As we’ve user tested the new Vuze, new and advanced users have found the all-in-one functionality to be both intuitive and powerful.

TF: You said before that you listened to feedback from users. How has this helped to develop the client?

Gilles: This release has been directly inspired by feedback from users. We’ve surveyed our users in multiple ways, talked with them on the phone, and watched them as they used the last version of Vuze client, as well as prototypes for this new one. We’ve talked to power users, casual users, and non-users. All of that is reflected in this release. That said, this release is just a foundation for the great things we’ve got in the development pipeline.

Vuze was scheduled to be launched today, but the release has been postponed for 48 hours. TorrentFreak readers who want to play around with an unofficial early release can grab it from Vuze (Win/Mac).

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The graph clearly shows that Azureus was the most searched for client until the beginning of 2007, followed by BitComet. From then on, uTorrent took over and it continued to grow while BitComet and Azureus searches slowly decreased. Search statistics are of course only an indirect measure of the popularity of a BitTorrent client, but the graphs seem to follow the same pattern as actual usage statistics which we have reported before.

Worldwide

Another measure that is worth looking into is the geographical distribution of the searches. It is interesting to see how popular BitComet is in Asia. Currently, it is (based on searches) the preferred client in China, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia and Hong Kong. However, uTorrent is most often searched for in most countries, especially in Moldova. Azureus, on the other hand, is a popular search term in Greece.

US

If we take a closer look at the US (you can do this for any country), we see that pretty much every BitTorrent client is popular in California. The graph shows that most uTorrent searches (relatively) come from Kentucky and California, Milpitas in particular. Azureus seems to be quite popular in Ohio, specifically in Salt Lake City. BitComet is the least searched for client of the three, but gets most search traffic from New York and California again, Monterey Park on this occasion.

Overall I would say that based on other statistics, the search data is a pretty close match to the actual BitTorrent client preferences. Google’s insights on the regional differences certainly have something to add to what we already know, but keep in mind that they are only search statistics. Most of all, it’s a fun tool to play around with on a Sunday afternoon when there’s not much news to go around.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Since there’s always a lot of debate about what works and what doesn’t, we decided to ask an expert to share his thoughts with us. Olivier Chalouhi, developer and CTO of Vuze (formerly known as Azureus) was kind enough to give us some of his own tips and tricks. Since Olivier was the person who initiated the Azureus Open Source project in 2003, which went on to create one of the most popular BitTorrent clients ever, if anyone knows how to get the best out of your torrent client, he does.

Here are some of Olivier’s tips for optimizing your torrent download speeds. There tips work with every BitTorrent client, except for the last one.

1. Seed.

Downloading speeds will be sub-optimal for everyone unless everyone plays their part and seeds. Private tracker sites are a great example of how the overall speed of the swarm increases when everyone is seeding and downloading in equal measure. So, play your part in seeding and tell others to as well.

2. Be connectable.

Make sure you’re not “firewalled” by opening up your incoming ports or by enabling UPnP in your router, otherwise you’ll be leaving bandwidth on the table.

3. Manage your upload speed.

It is all about striking a balance. You don’t want the upload speed to be too high, nor do you want it to be too low. Ideally you want to set your upload speed to be 80% of the maximum possible line speed.

TF note: Want an easy life? Try this handy settings calculator, works for all clients

4. Select the right torrents.

Your download will be faster if you choose to download a torrent where there is a good balance of seeds and peers. For instance, Vuze ranks its search results according to the number of seeds and peers to make this easier.

5. Be realistic.

Check the swarm average and if you’re already above average, then you just need to be patient. If you’re below average, go back and check some of these other things I’ve mentioned.

6. Get a Friend Boost.

I wouldn’t be a Vuze developer if I didn’t give a plug for the Friend Boost feature we recently developed :). When you create a network of Friends on Vuze, you agree to seed content to each other on a preferential basis. That is, if one of your friends has a torrent that you want, you will be able to directly use a portion of their bandwidth to get it. In most cases this will increase your download speed.

Obviously, ways in which to actually implement some of these tips will differ from client to client. If you want to find out how to do it on Vuze, you can check out our wiki.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Things changed in 2006 when Azureus launched the content distribution platform it called ‘Vuze’ (aka Zudeo), backed up by a total of $34 million venture capital. For a while, they kept releasing a no-Vuze version of Azureus (when Vuze/Zudeo was in Beta), but Vuze CEO, Gilles BianRosa told TorrentFreak that this only caused confusion among their users.

“We started to change our name from Azureus to Vuze over a year ago, but we did not make the change in a clear or consistent manner,” Gilles said. “This has caused a great deal of confusion amongst our users. We want to rectify this situation by changing our name to Vuze consistently.”

“Whilst we recognize the strength of the Azureus name and the frog, it is only associated with our original BitTorrent application. As we move towards creating an all-in-one application for finding, playing and sharing great content, that goes beyond the realm of just a BitTorrent client, we wanted to change our name to reflect that, but bring with us the frog who is such a part of our heritage,” Gilles added.

Today, Vuze comes with a brand new release of their client (v3.1), introducing several new features. One of the most drastic changes is the new social layer that has been added to the client. Vuze users are now able to add friends, share torrents with friends, and give friends a speed boost when you are downloading the same torrent.

The new client also includes a meta-search engine that allows you to search across several popular BitTorrent sites, in addition to content from Vuze.com. The search functionality is completely customizable, so you can add you personal favorite if it’s not already included.

Unfortunately, there will not be a Vuze client available without the Vuze platform integrated. Gilles told TorrentFreak: “We are focusing our efforts on delivering against our vision of creating an all-in-one application that enables users to find, download, play and share in one streamlined application.”

“We have started on a path of creating an all-in-one application that enables users to find, play and share torrents. In particular, we believe that by enabling users to share content and bandwidth through the “Friends” feature we are adding a completely new dimension to peer-to-peer – a new social dimension, or what we call ’social P2P’,” Gilles said.

Azureus is no more, the name change is permanent. On the one hand this is a step forward, as the new interface and functionality will appeal to new users. However, it has also caused quite a heated debate among both developers and users who were happy with the classic UI. Although, it’s a bit hidden, the original interface still remains accessible with the UI switcher. Time will tell if it is the right move.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

“We at Vuze (Azureus) decided there was something important you can do to help elevate the debate,” says Jay Monahan, General Counsel at Azureus. “We created a simple software “plug-in” that works with your Vuze (Azureus) application to gather information about potential interference with your Internet traffic.”

The main purpose of the plugin is to gather factual data on which ISPs are throttling with BitTorrent, and to what extent. Already there is an ever growing list of bad ISPs available at the Azureus wiki, but the data from the plugin will make their case even stronger.

When the first ISPs started to throttle BitTorrent traffic, Azureus was one of the first BitTorrent clients to introduce a countermeasure, namely, protocol header encryption. However, this was only the beginning of an ongoing cat and mouse game between ISPs and BitTorrent client developers.

Unfortunately, BitTorrent encryption doesn’t work against the more aggressive, and ever evolving throttling applications. Even though there is a Comcast proof BitTorrent encryption in the making, it is always easier to use political means to stop ISPs from messing with our traffic in the first place. The plugin is listed at Azureus’ Sourceforge page if you want to help out.

For the paranoid BitTorrent users among us, Monahan guarantees that the data will be sent anonymously. “Be assured that sharing this data with us does not involve disclosure of any of your personally identifiable information. We will aggregate the data and may talk about it or disclose it publicly, but no data about any specific user will be disclosed as part of this effort.”

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.