Torrentz Celebrates 5th Anniversary
Written by Ernesto on July 24, 2008Torrentz.com, the largest BitTorrent meta-search engine, celebrates its 5th anniversary today. The site, one of the oldest torrent sites around, has evolved quite a lot over the years. Let’s take a look at how it all started.
Back in 2003, torrent sites came and went like the wind. Since most sites were hosted on home connections or shared hosting accounts, they were struggling to stay online. And, with the MPAA keeping a close eye on every newcomer, legal pressure ended the aspirations of some webmasters.
Nonetheless, during July 2003 a new BitTorrent site by the name of “Torrentz” was launched. Initially, Torrentz was hosting torrent files, the opposite of its position today. The first torrent file – “X-Files [1x01] – Pilot” – was uploaded July 24, 2003, 1:28PM, exactly 5 years ago. Although the torrent file is no longer available the site is still going strong and the visitor count is growing every day.
Torrentz went live only a week after torrentse.cx, one of the largest BitTorrent sites at the time, chose to pull the plug. Like many others, torrentse.cx decided to shut down their site after they received a warning. At the time, one of the administrators stated: “The site torrentse.cx received a cease and desist letter during the day of Wednesday, July 16, 2003 for copyright infringement. The entire website has been removed and will not return.”
Another popular BitTorrent site, bytemonsoon.com, threw in the towel around the same time. “Due to excessive bandwidth usage, lack of a stable host, consistent dos attacks, and lack of other options and as I’m leaving in 5 hours and haven’t slept yet, I have no other choice but to shut the site down,” the admin wrote. Those were turbulent times, and SuprNova.org was pretty much the only large site left. However, the sites that went down were soon replaced and these new sites were growing fast – so did Torrentz.
The screenshot below was taken in August 2003, only two weeks after the site went public. As you can see, most torrents had only a handful of peers. Now, five years later, Torrentz has over a million visitors a day, while it indexes more than 10 million pages.
Happy Birthday…
Previously: ISPs To Send “Hundreds of Thousands” of File-Sharing Warnings
Next: MPAA Hacker Spied on The Pirate Bay
26 Responses
first :) 5th anniversary congrats
good news
Glad to see sites sticking around this long.
long live torrentz
torrentz rocks! my main torrent search engine!
funny, that screenshot of the site reminds me on SuprNova, thats because it is the same style as SuprNova. like many sites back then they copyed the look of SuprNova. maybe it was because it was the main/first torrent site software written.
anyway long live sites like these and TPB
fuck the RIAA/MPAA!
Happy Birthday, may you live twice as long… at least!
I’m sorry but Scrapetorrent.com is much better…
Congratz, nice work… go on with your service, it’s a quite useful one…
X-Files [1x02] – Deep Throat
LULZ
torrentz rocks but sadly the site would be useless without the sites that host the torrent files.. its success is based off of the other sites.
5 years being up is not small feet. Congrats…
why is TPB down …
#9 I suppose google is useless.
damn i love this history lesson…”Let there be torrents” should be the moto/preamble(what ever that shit means)…..To thinks this deluge as encrypted bits of data, I am in awe every time the MPAA+RIAA takes it up the ass AGAIN…
Yay for the X-files :D
But it is *just* a meta site. They don’t really contribute anything of any real use to the bittorrent community.
Long live the king!
http://www.alphaboard.co.cc/blog
Let it live much longer!
Really? I always thought it was just a fake/scam site.
Come on, how come most comments are negative towards the site?
It’s a good site, with many search results and more complete than sticking with any one site, like mininova or tpb. It’s the sum of all parts.
Just a meta site, but not very different from google, like #12 said.
The main reason I don’t use torrentz is that, because they don’t host .torrent files, I’d have to download from nearly all of their links to get a full tracker list. And those links aren’t hotlinks either, which I understand, but it still makes it a long job compared to downloading a unified file from mininova or isohunt.
Scrapetorrent.com HUMMMMM just leaves spywear on your computer don’t go there!!!! Long live Torrentz
I dont know what you mean #12, all your comment says is that you suppose google is useles.. which makes no sense. Google is an entire web search, torrentz is focused on torrent sites. They would both be useless without the sites they search.. although google being far more invincible.
What im saying is, torrentz doesn’t actually contribute anything real to the torrent community other then convenient linking. Sites that link to other sites.
I love torrentz, but they are a very weak link in the P2P community. The pirate bay and mininova ect ect, FUEL the P2P community. Without them, P2P would not be as easy and popular as it is today.
This is useless to even talk about, torrentz has done a great job, I only wish they were man enough to host torrent files.
but I think Bit is everywhere fobidden.right?ogl
It searches TPB better than going to the main site, always finds better results
http://ladysmooth.com/
Thanks for being there.Live long and strong
Wow, that is outstanding! Way to go Torrentz! Keeping it FREE!
JT
http://www.FireMe.To/udi
Happy fifth, Torrentz.com – & many more to come.
P.S. re. the X-Files comments, see there’s a new movie out soon…
=]
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