Tweet Your Favorite Torrents With TorrentTwitter
Written by enigmax on June 08, 2009The micro-blogging service Twitter continues to increase in popularity but while it’s great to hear about what that B-grade celebrity had for breakfast or where your best friend woke up this morning, readers of TorrentFreak will probably prefer hearing about torrents. That’s where TorrentTwitter steps in.
In the unlikely event you’re unfamiliar with the basics of Twitter, here is a twenty second crash course. Twitter is a free micro blogging platform where users can send each other short messages. Known as ‘tweets’, these messages consist of no more than 140 characters and are sent to other Twitter users who previously subscribed to the sending user’s profile. These people are known as ‘followers’. The message will also be available for all to see on the web.
Now, clearly inspired by Twitter, comes a new micro-blogging service called TorrentTwitter. After the brief registration process (OpenID accepted), users can post short messages of maximum 140 characters. It’s possible to send any information you choose using the original Twitter and the same is possible on the TorrentTwitter service, but it seems to have been designed with the sharing of BitTorrent links in mind.
Most updates on this niche Twitter seem to contain the the location of .torrent files on the web via a short URL, along with related details. These messages are sent to the user’s followers via the web, instant message, RSS feeds or SMS, and also appear on the public timeline on the mainpage.
Of course, as a user of TorrentTwitter it’s also possible to follow other users of the service too. Maybe you know of someone who likes downloading the same kind of music as you – subscribe to his or her feed and get informed the second they share that information. Alternatively, with enough users TorrentTwitter will become a user generated meta-search engine for torrent files.
The other possibility for users on TorrentTwitter is the creation of a group to which other users can join. In a torrent context, a group can be focused on a particular subject, say the latest TV shows. Any member of that group could send an update of where to find the latest torrent for a particular show, and instantaneously everyone in the group is notified. Groups can be as specific or as diverse as the user chooses.
Right now since the site only launched on June 2nd, there are only a handful of groups listed, leaving plenty of scope and opportunity for those wishing to start a new group. Joining a group is easy, just click ‘join’ on the group’s page.
TorrentTwitter also has a cloud displaying the most popular tags on the site, along with most popular and featured TorrentTweets, if that’s the correct term. We’re expecting news from the site owner and we’ll update this post when that arrives.
Previously: How Pirates Shook European Politics
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35 Responses
cool stuff
Signed up
lame imo public shit sux
“zOMG, ITS A MAFIAA/RIAA TRAP!!1!1eleventyone”-type comments in three… two… one…
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#4 does have a point this could be used to by the maffia and friends to easily find the most popular torrents to spy on :/.
this is also nice:
http://www.twitter.com/torrentbird
I’d prefer TorrentIdentica, http://identi.ca is a free, open source alternative to Twitter.
the simple fact is if you need to sign up it wont get used anywere as near as if you dont need to register anything to use it.
thats the reason i use this very site even with its very SLOW sceen refesh problems, that NEEDS fixing one day BTW….
i will not be tracked in any form if i can avoid it…..
if someone wants a werthwhile torrent tweet to use, id like to let people know the massive Drwho 173 GIG collection
08283C51 CCCBD706 D34EA1E8 F0BF7121 91649AA5
has today reached 50+ 100% seeding after months of slow uploading by a single dedicated seed user, thanks
http://www.mininova.org/tor/2014964
Hey, looking a bit closer this is based on laconica, the same software that powers identica. But there is no information about the source code so this may be a violation of the GNU Affero General Public License :(
TorrentTwitter runs the same software as identi.ca, which has built in support for the OMB-standard. OMB (OpenMicroBlogging) lets you follow, and talk with, people across servers, so if you have an account on identi.ca you can follow people on TorrentTwitter, and the other way around. In addition to being able to follow all the other people on the dozens of microbloggs with OMB-support out there.
Please ask your favorite microblog-service to implement support for OMB. Ask @evan on identi.ca if you need more info (than you can find on Wikipedia) or want help with implementing it.
“so if you have an account ” i and many others dont, and never will sign up for an account, make it usable without signing up and ill use it perhaps…..
thats why bugmenot exists OC but thats another story….
Wow, site went down ten minutes ago. Digg effect?
Gee. I wonder how long before the obese high-blood-pressure lawyers start sending them cease and desist letters, forcing them to close down, surrender all their username/passwords/ip addresses and all other logs to them? ;) I also wonder how long before the RIAA/MPAA tries to buy them out so they could flog their overpriced DRM infested MP3’s and idiotic ring tones? ;)
Smells like an obvious money maker to me. ;)~~~~~~~
Heh, pretty cool I guess. Signed up how to check things out. I could see this as a alternative to RSS feeds. Instead of subscribing to one feed, you can subscribe to a tag.
http://torrentino.net
It looks promising, but I wonder how it will stand up when the legal threats start pouring in.
What if I don’t want to?
It wont stand up. It’s just another just group of naive people who think they can outrun the law. The pirate bay has the money to pursue a long legal battle, but that is a luxury almost no other torrent service has.
You don’t.
ok
I think people are confusing between torrent hosting with torrent tweeting. TorrentTwitter is a tweeting service that allows people to post notices with links to their favorite torrents. TorrentTwitter does not store any torrent files. At the end of the day TorrentTwitter can be seen as a search engine because once can search for torrents based on tags. So how many torrent search engines have been taken to court so far?
This software makes use of http://identi.ca a FOSS clone of twitter.
@April : it still makes life easier for those want to torrent pirated material, because it’s one easy to use source.
@3 too bad only shit interests you.
@neostyles: Sure, using hashtags, searching has been made easy on TorrentTwitter. I think this is one of the greatest features of TorrentTwitter. But the fact remains, torrents are not hosted on TorrentTwitter site. By the way, there are thousands of torrents on Twitter itself but it is being used for all sorts of notices.
@13 it is and will always be the slashdot effect. No matter how it happens. (Not really ;))
Nice idea but they should integrate http://toto.to to shorten torrent links. With toto they also wouldn’t have the problem of linking seedless torrents.
They don’t give credit to laconica (http://laconi.ca) for using their open source software. Very sad….
tweet on my dick while i f*ck your mom!
MORONS!!!
Please anybody could help these little fellow here.
…they CALLED it TorrentTWITTER?
Get ready for a lawsuit… you dummies.
@Ummmm
Lets sue twitterfeed as well then?? Any many more.
the MPAA has opened a new site called TWATTER
i agree
I can not reach the site. Does any one else have such problems?
BlahBlahBlahBlahBlahI’mJustAnotherMafiaaShillSpoutingShitBlahBlahBlahBlahBlah
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