When the first article was published on TorrentFreak, I never imagined that the blog would be where it is right now. One of the main purposes of TorrentFreak has always been to cover file-sharing news from the perspective of file-sharers, often to counter the misleading messages that are put into this world by anti-piracy lobbyists.
Initially, I started to write up a few ‘tips and tricks’ type articles, complemented by the occasional news item. Right from the start, TorrentFreak got some decent traffic thanks to the community on Digg.com, which was a real motivator to continue blogging. Over time, TorrentFreak developed into a more serious news outlet, more and more articles were unique and the quality of writing improved.
As the popularity of BitTorrent grew, so did TorrentFreak’s traffic, and with that came the opportunity to meet some great characters, including most of the people who run the BitTorrent sites I love to write about. A few months after TorrentFreak was born, I became we. Smaran was the first writer to join the blog, and although he stopped contributing in 2006, he played his part in the evolution of TorrentFreak.
Running a blog like TorrentFreak is an impossible talk for one person, and I was more than happy when Enigmax (Andy) joined me in early 2006. For almost two years now, Enigmax and I have been running the daily operations at TorrentFreak, and together we spend most of our free time writing articles. Unlike some people think, TorrentFreak is not a professional operation, that is, Enigmax and I both have full-time jobs aside. TorrentFreak is a hobby project, and we write because we are passionate about BitTorrent and file-sharing, not because we need to, in a job sense.
Although we would love to, it would be impossible to mention everyone who has contributed to TorrentFreak. We’ve had several guest writers and received thousands of tips from readers – they have all contributed to the site in some way or another. Besides Enigmax and myself, Ben Jones is the third regular on TorrentFreak. Although he prefers to do research instead of writing, his contributions can’t be missed.
At TorrentFreak we don’t see ourselves as journalists. We are P2P enthusiasts, who love to document how the Internet, and BitTorrent in particular, is changing how we interact with online media. We also write extensively on how the world, and the law, reacts to this (re)evolution. We write about things that interest us, and hope that others are interested in them too.
We write because it’s our passion. Cnet UK did a piece on us today, and Nate Lanxon sums us up nicely: “The rise of blogging has been fueled less by money, and more by the desire to write about subjects people truly care about. And in the world of news, that often means writing at ungodly hours, for ungodly hours on end.”
Of course, we won’t stop here and we hope to bring you many more articles in the future. Even though our time is limited, we aim to publish at least one article each and every day. In a way our limited time is also a quality check. It’s not that hard to publish 4 or 5 articles a day, but if you only have time for one, you’ll have to make sure it’s unique, and worth it. Of course we are always open to contributions from readers, or aspiring bloggers who want to help out.
We have some pretty exciting plans for the future which we will will announce soon, and a redesign is being worked on as well. Writing for TorrentFreak has been a a great endeavor thus far, most of all thanks to you, our readers We’re here to stay, and hope the next three years will be as much fun as the first.
