BitTorrent Launches a Social File Sharing Service

BitTorrent, the company responsible for developing the BitTorrent protocol that claimed over 100 million monthly active users, has launched a new file sharing application called Share on Thursday.

Designed to compete with DropBox and other cloud-based file sharing services, Share allows a subscriber to share files with an unlimited number of personal contacts. Users can comment on files in real time while they are being shared, adding a social networking dimension to filesharing.

Share has been built on Amazon’s EC2 and S3 services, according to GigaOm, which allows files to be cached in the cloud until the recipient has retrieved them. There is no size limit imposed by BitTorrent for users of the service. Other companies have offered similar services but failed under the cost of hosting huge amounts of data, but BitTorrent plans to offset costs by distributing the bandwidth and storage among users of the service, which is how the BitTorrent protocol was designed.

This new software offering comes at an interesting time given the discussion of the anti-piracy legislation SOPA and the latest report highlighting U.S. attitudes and use of file sharing. The idea of sharing files among friends and family, according to the study conducted by the American Assembly, a research group affiliated with Columbia University, is embraced by 70% of Americans.

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