ARMOUR Posted February 21, 2018 Share Posted February 21, 2018 The ad-free and privacy-focused torrent site "SkyTorrents" has become a victim of its own success. With millions of pageviews per day, the site was too expensive to manage, leaving the operator no other option than to shut it down. People who are interested in the site's 15 million torrent database can now grab a copy before it disappears for good. About a year ago we first heard about SkyTorrents, an ambitious new torrent site which guaranteed a private and ad-free experience for its users. Initially, we were skeptical. However, the site quickly grew a steady userbase through sites such as Reddit and after a few months, it was still sticking to its promise. “We will NEVER place any ads,” SkyTorrents’ operator informed us last year. “The site will remain ad-free or it will shut down. When our funds dry up, we will go for donations. We can also handover to someone with similar intent, interests, and the goal of a private and ad-free world.” In the months that followed, these words turned out to be almost prophetic. It didn’t take long before SkyTorrents had several million pageviews per day. This would be music to the ears of many site owners but for SkyTorrents it was a problem. With the increase in traffic, the server bills also soared. This meant that the ad-free search engine had to cough up roughly $1,500 per month, which is quite an expensive hobby. The site tried to cover at least part of the costs with donations but that didn’t help much either. This led to the rather ironic situation where users of the site encouraged the operator to serve ads. “Everyone is saying they would rather have ads then have the site close down,” one user wrote on Reddit last summer. “I applaud you. But there is a reason why every other site has ads. It’s necessary to get revenue when your customers don’t pay.” The site’s operator was not easily swayed though, not least because ads also compromise people’s privacy. Eventually funds dried up and now, after the passing of several more months, he has now decided to throw in the towel. “It was a great experience to serve and satisfy people around the world,” the site’s operator says. That’s 444 gigabytes of .torrent files for all the archivists out there. Alternatively, the site also offers a listing of just the torrent hashes, which is a more manageable 322 megabytes. SkyTorrents’ operator says that he hopes someone will host the entire cache of torrents and “take it forward.” In addition, he thanks hosting company NFOrce for the service it has provided. Whether anyone will pick up the challenge has yet to be seen. What’s has become clear though is that operating a popular ad-free torrent site is hard to pull off for long, unless you have deep pockets. — Backup View Article Source: Torrentfreak.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IronY-Man Posted February 21, 2018 Share Posted February 21, 2018 Viva La' Resistance !! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pequi Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 It's a shame. One of my favorite search engines. I suppose I'll have to go back to using Google .... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrator DKT27 Posted February 22, 2018 Administrator Share Posted February 22, 2018 I do not think I have heard too much about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimmyjazz Posted March 11, 2018 Share Posted March 11, 2018 Never heard of it, sounded like a good project, anyway I can't download the listing of the torrent hashes, is it me or they are gone? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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