BitTorrent: Rumors about Layoffs Are True

BitTorrent, a company whose field of activity is the p2p content delivery technology based on the protocol of the same name, has confirmed that the lay offs affecting its entire sales and marketing staff for the business will be made after all.

Yesterday, BitTorrent came out into the light admitting to having laid off some of its staff. Previously, a report first made public by Valleywag, informed that twelve of BitTorrent's 55 employees, which form its sales and marketing departments, had been dismissed.

Some say that BitTorrent may be trying to get back to the original focal point -the consumer segment of its business, due to which its file sharing technology became so popular in the first place. There are also some views that BitTorrent is willing to give its "DNA" service for Internet broadcasters, proposed last October, for free. DNA was regarded for a while as a premium service to content providers. BitTorrent’s intention to provide companies a low-cost method of delivery may turn out to have been a failure.

The initial belief that the layoffs have to do with the unsuccessful attempt to sell the company’s online entertainment store was attacked by BitTorrent representative Lily Lin.

There have been inaccurate reports published this week regarding layoffs at BitTorrent, Inc. We would like to clarify that BitTorrent remains focused on generating the most value for our partners and customers to drive long-term success. While layoffs are always a difficult course of action, we have reduced our staff to better align our resources around our core content delivery infrastructure business. Contrary to published reports, we reduced less than 20% of our team and those impacted were distributed across our organization, rather than focused on a single department. Also contrary to published reports, the layoffs were unrelated to any ongoing discussions to divest a portion of our business. That claim is irresponsible “journalism” and outright false. While it is our policy to not comment on rumors, the company has indeed been involved in strategic discussions with potential partners who are interested in the BitTorrent online store. These discussions continue.

With the explosive growth of online video, peer-to-peer technology will continue to be an integral part of the Internet infrastructure as it enables the most efficient distribution of large files. Not only is BitTorrent the global leader in the P2P space with the largest client footprint, but we are working closely with the world’s leading ISPs, including Comcast, and standards bodies such as the IETF to implement solutions that will provide the best P2P user experience to accommodate all network topologies.

BitTorrent is seeing healthy demand for its Delivery Network Accelerator (DNA) service and its Software Development Kit (SDK), which brings rich Internet media to the TV. We are working with many online video, gaming, software and hardware companies to integrate BitTorrent technology. As such, our top priority is to deliver the most valuable and efficient solutions to the BitTorrent community and technology marketplace.