VIPeers has launched a new and totally free BitTorrent hosting service. With VIPeers, everyone can easily share large files up to 5 GB with as many people as they wish, without having to seed it themselves. The service can be best described as a mashup between one-click hosting sites like Rapidshare and BitTorrent.
Although millions of people use BitTorrent on a daily basis, only a few are actually publishing content. When someone wants to share a large video file or a couple of photo’s, Rapidshare and similar file hosting services are often preferred. With
VIPeers this might change, since it is one of the few sites that makes it really easy to share files over BitTorrent. The service eliminates the need to create a .torrent file, add trackers, and seed the file - stuff people often find cumbersome. All you need to do is use the web based uploader, point to the file you want to share on your computer, and VIPeers takes care of the rest.
The whole process works very intuitively, and even people who have never heard of trackers, seeds or peers will be able use it without running into trouble. When the file has been uploaded to VIPeers, it will show a list of sharing options, including a direct link to the .torrent file. You can send this link to the people you want to share the file with, or upload the torrent file to any other BitTorrent site if you don’t mind making it public.
In addition, VIPeers offers “widgets” for blogs, forums and other websites to make it even more easy to share files. The other option is to include a link to the download page, which also has a
direct download link, and a link to download it via Podmailing.
VIPeers’ Louis Choquel told TorrentFreak that he has seen the highest speed with BitTorrent downloads, especially when more people are downloading the file. Another advantage of using BitTorrent is that the torrent can live on indefinitely. “The duration of hosting is limited to a maximum of 3 months. But after that, we continue tracking the torrent so that the swarm can live on and enable people to continue downloading it, even though it’s not on our server anymore,” Choquel said.
Overall I would say that VIPeers has succeeded in making BitTorrent more accessible as a publishing tool, and a 5 GB limit is much more than most of the competition offers. Also, not having to seed a file can be very convenient. The only downside to the service is that you’ll have to sign up in order to upload files.
VIPeers is currently invite only, but TorrentFreak readers can sign up with the invite code
