-
Searching for BitTorrent
At the helm of Searching.com is John Gotts. Many people may not be quite familiar with the name or what Seraching.com represents, but anyone involved in the BitTorrent community will be soon, if they haven’t already.
John Gott’s community – or family as he calls it – of websites generates a substantial amount of web traffic. According to John, his websites are responsible for drawing over 60 million unique visitors per month. Part of this consortium includes Wiki.Com, PhotoAlbum.com, eTunes.com and an assortment of employment sites, recipe sites, dating sites, and just about anything searchable. What does this mean to the BitTorrent faithful?
John’s interested in BitTorrent because it represents exactly the overall genre he's interested in – the pursuit of knowledge. Every site his consortium has an interest in has some connection with the search of information. However BitTorrent represents an avenue yet to be explored – an untapped potential that has a lock on the highly sought after 15-35 age demographic.
“BitTorrent.com got it right,” John told Slyck.com. “That’s the future of our Torrent sites.”
Like Bram Cohen has said from the beginning, John is adamantly against copyright infringement. And like Bram, John is secure in the fact that he can delve into the BitTorrent world, keep the community happy, yet monetize the vast untapped potential.
“What I’d love to see is the ability of people to rent or buy a file. People would still have the choice of a free copy [with advertising], but we could also have a high quality copy without ads and faster download speeds. Imagine if we could monetize that potential – money that would otherwise be lost would instead go to the copyright holders.”
“We also want to create a place for independent media. If you’re just starting off, where else can you go?” As many independent artists have discovered, file-sharing networks have been instrumental for success.
And the assimilation has already begun. Anyone who’s a frequent guest of myBittorrent.com may have already picked up on a few subtleties. Located at the header of the site, there’s Searching.com’s logo – and accompanying the logo are six torrent sites; BushTorrent, Demonoid, Fenopy, TorrentPortal and TorrentReactor.
To the right side of myBitTorrent.com is a set of links to Searching.com. Look familiar? What all these torrent sites, including myBittorrent.com, have in common is they all belong to the Searching.com community. John’s dream of expanding his empire to include all things searchable is becoming a reality with the absorption of several high profile BitTorrent sites.
But John was clear to point out that absorbing the over 150 various sites doesn’t equate to absolute ownership – although his company usually buys a controlling share.
“Everyone owns a piece of everything. Think of it as a family. We all help each other, and we don’t baby-sit anyone. It’s a brain trust of engineers.” As part of a large “partnership” – rather than ownership - when work needs to be done somewhere in the collective, a programmer from a partnership website may find him or herself working on VideoAdvertising.com (an anti-click fraud website.)
John finds himself fortunate that he’s working with some of the brightest minds in the field – many of whom are responsible for the top 500, 1000, or 10,000 websites online. He’s confident of his partner’s abilities, and because of their brimming potential, he’ll be as “big as MySpace.com in 12 months.”
Yet changes are coming, and in many cases they are already beginning to manifest. Demonoid.com already has links to eTunes, as myBittorrent.com does. The face of many BitTorrent sites will see radical changes occur in the near future, changes that will transform people’s perceived interpretation of what a BitTorrent site should be. Searching.com is targeting the massive economic potential of the coveted 15-35 demographic – let’s see if they play along.
----------
was wondering what was up with that header. It was so annoying when the side bar was on the left.:pinch: ooo from slyck little late though.
:source: Source: http://www.slyck.com/story1343.html
