uTorrent’s Advertising Plans Made Optional

August 16, 2012 by
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Digital Media, Mobile Phones, P2P technology, Downloads, File-Sharing Programs, Networks & Services, Legal P2P News & Issues, Movies, MP3, Digital Audio & Games 

Just this Monday we’ve informed our readers that uTorrent – the number one file-sharing client on the internet – will become ad-supported. As expected, uTorrent enthusiasts did not take the news lightly and reacted as seen below.

While BitTorrent Inc. made the announcement of an ad-supported file-sharing client, they’ve also encouraged the community to express an opinion on this decision. Here’s what they’ve got:

“An absolute disgrace. uTorrent used to be an excellent lightweight client with some great features, now its just a bloated and buggy piece of crap which is now going to be bundled with adware,” a BitTorrent user posted on uTorrent’s forum.

“You were great until a short time ago. Now you are just turning into a bloated mess like all the others. Whoever the genius was to think including ads in your pretty GUI would be a good idea should be gently hung with barbed wire,” said another.

While the majority may not think the same, BitTorrent listened and announced the other day that they’ll offer users the chance to choose whether they want an ad-supported file-sharing client or not.

“We’ve long contemplated an opt-out mechanism for the new offers and advertisements we will be experimenting with. Given all that’s been said here, we’ve decided to release the initial version with an opt-out mechanism. Users should have the choice to opt-out, and we will provide them with ways to do so,” said BitTorrent CEO Eric Klinker.

He also added that their intentions were to use the money from ads to improve and invest in the future of file-sharing technology.

“Opt-in offer experiences also help us bring new levels of investment; not just to the uTorrent client, but also to future iterations of peer-to-peer technology. In other words: experiments like this can help prove to the world that there is a legitimate third way in digital distribution.”

“Experiments like this help us give the distributed technology that we all believe in a fighting chance.”

This reaction has not come as a surprise, however, since it’s not the first time groups of uTorrent users lashed out against BitTorrent’s changes. As such, the company is probably confident that a lot of their users (and they are many) will support this “campaign”.

“We will be removing Apps in a near-future release because they’ve not been a success among our user base worldwide. Similarly, we will evaluate other existing features. We know that not every one of our features is a success, and our goal is to ship a slim base product with only those features users like and use,” the company wrote in a separate forum post, as a response to the accusations of uTorrent becoming bloatware.

“Beyond this, we hear the calls among many of you for a µ that is smaller and meaner than the current µ. Something like 1.6, 2.0 or similar. Over the past year, we’ve discussed various paths to getting there and are taking this request seriously.”

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