BitTorrent’s super-secure file-sharing app, BitTorrent Sync, has had a dang good month. The company announced today that the app’s userbase has jumped from 1 million to nearly 2 million users over the past four weeks.
BitTorrent bills BitTorrent Sync as a privacy-centric alternative to cloud storage services like Dropbox, allowing users to share files of any size with other users, or between separate devices. Unlike Dropbox or any other cloud storage service, BitTorrent Sync uses no central servers. Instead, it uses BitTorrent’s peer-to-peer technology to enable high-speed file transfers. BitTorrent sync also allows users to encrypt their file transfers using a automatically generated key or a scannable QR code.
The rising success of BitTorrent Sync comes as a result of users’ renewed concerns about the privacy and security of their digital information thanks to the ongoing revelations about the National Security Agency’s surveillance efforts, according to the company. Because BitTorrent Sync uses no middle-man servers, users’ files are theoretically more secure, and less susceptible to subpoena from law enforcement.
“2013 will be remembered as 1984: the year we woke up to the reality of server farms and stacks,” wrote BitTorrent CEO Eric Klinker on the company blog. “Our personal information is now property of a few corporations; subject to dragnet data collection by our own government.”
BitTorrent – a company most commonly associated with illegal file-sharing – used the NSA revelations earlier this year as a centerpiece in it’s rebranding efforts, which included a series of enigmatic billboards in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.
Services like Dropbox appear to be BitTorrent Sync’s most direct competitor, and BitTorrent takes direct aim at the cloud storage provider in its latest press blast. According to the chart above, BitTorrent Sync “is growing 2X as fast as Dropbox.” Sounds impressive – but it’s a bit misleading. Dropbox’s growth rate in this chart is based on statements from the company uttered between 2008 and 2010 – the latest date being almost four years ago. Since that time, Dropbox has grown to more than 200 million users.
Still, BitTorrent Sync does have some major advantages over Dropbox – especially in terms of transfer speed, which the company claims (and we can at least roughly verify) is around seven times faster than Dropbox. The company says this has led to BitTorrent Sync users “moving 40x as much data as Dropbox users.”
In addition to the BitTorrent Sync app, available for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS, the company also recently released the BitTorrent Sync API, which allows developers to incorporate its fast, encrypted file-transfer powers into other apps.
To get BitTorrent Sync for your devices, click here.