µTorrent Officially Goes Down the Shitter: ADS INCOMING

[Computermaster]

[quote]
Hello Everyone,

In a few weeks we are going to release a new version of µTorrent. This update includes improvements and changes that we think you are going to like. We always appreciate our forum users for their dedication, feedback and candor. We want to keep investing in to this community by keeping an open and honest channel of communication.

Moving on:

First, we added bug fixes, performance enhancements and user-requested features. Torrents with many files load faster and magnet links preload content in the add-torrent dialogue. We also improved the speed of torrents over network shares and added several improvements to streaming playback. There’s plenty more and you can read the full change-log at the usual spot.

The next major change you will see is a fresh approach to creating a no-nonsense and free torrenting experience. You are all very familiar with how we have paid the bills so far. These new changes mark our next step towards finding that difficult balance between keeping our lights on and providing a positive user experience. This new build will display a featured torrent at the top of your torrent list. This featured torrent space will be used to offer a variety of different types of content. We are working towards bringing you offers that are relevant to you. This means films, games, music, software...basically anything that you will find interesting. We may not get it right on the first try but we will continue to improve our efforts based on your feedback.

We are also leveraging these offers to directly benefit the artist community including filmmakers, recording artists, game developers and more. We are going to show the world what all of you here already know: that torrenting can be used for good.

Let us know your comments and thoughts in this thread. We are listening, and we value your feedback.

The µTorrent Team

PS: We have included an FAQ below that will hopefully answer a few questions you might have:

µTorrent Offers Q&A

What is changing with µTorrent offers?
- One additional offer location: A narrow rectangle just below the toolbar within the µTorrent UI will present relevant offers to users.
- Better-targeted offer types: We will pursue making offers that are targeted and interesting to our users.

What type of offers will you show?

- The first offer type will inform users of our own new products, features and services.
- The second offer type will come from our offer partners, whose offerings include things such as games, security products and privacy services.
- The final offer type will feature independent artists, such as musicians and film makers.

Can I turn in-client offers off?
Currently you’ll be able to skip offers of no interest to you by clicking an x within the ad, which will advance you to the next offer. There is no way to turn in-client offers off*. We will pay attention to feedback, and may change this in the future.

*Note that users of µTorrent Plus will not be served offers in the client. We are looking into other offer-free alternatives for users as well.

Why are you making this change?
1. It starts with our business model which is familiar to everyone: We provide our users with free software from which they get outstanding value, and we keep our lights on through advertising.
2. Given this, we want to make sure our offers are more relevant and valuable to you, our users.

How does this change my privacy?
It doesn’t affect your privacy. Of course, you’ll want to confirm this for yourself. We encourage you to view all client-to-server communication via a program like wireshark. Like any software, µTorrent has always communicated to a server to check for software updates; now it will also check for offer updates. No personally identifiable information is passed during this communication.
[/quote]

Source: [url]http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=123040[/url]

Welp, fuck that.

[MightyMax]

i never left bittorrent.

[DamagePoint]

Well, time to find a new torrent client.

edit:

Any recommendations?

[Character]

who cares? how else will they keep up with the project without money?

[IdiotStorm]

solution: never update µTorrent

[hamsterjuice]

forgive me for not being a torrent aficionado but apart from stuff like ads and other functions, what's the difference between all the torrent programs
do some download faster?

[Reds]

I'll just not update or switch to another client.

[Missing User]

i'm just not going to update, fuck that.

[Computrix]

This isn't really a big deal. It's not like it's adware and stealing your data or like annoying strobing banner ads on webpages.

[Zeldabro]

[QUOTE=DamagePoint;37192034]Well, time to find a new torrent client.

edit:

Any recommendations?[/QUOTE]

Deluge is pretty neat

[lifehole]

Deluge is better even if it is 10 times the size.

[FFStudios]

this might actually be a good way to find cool torrents

[ice445]

[QUOTE=DamagePoint;37192034]Well, time to find a new torrent client.

edit:

Any recommendations?[/QUOTE]

Vuze/Deluge

[Silverspar]

[QUOTE=DamagePoint;37192034]Well, time to find a new torrent client.

edit:

Any recommendations?[/QUOTE]
I've always used Vuze/Azerus and preferred it to utorrent, It's lightweight and runs in Java.

[SPESSMEHREN]

[quote]- The second offer type will come from our offer partners, whose offerings include things such as games, security products and privacy services.[/quote]

Yes, because advertising your games and software to people [i]illegally downloading games and software[/i] is a great advertising strategy!

[bohb]

[QUOTE=radiomonster;37192068]Deluge is pretty neat[/QUOTE]

Deluge is nice on Linux, not so much on Windows. I've never been able to get it to work on Windows, it either crashes on launch, uses 100% CPU time or won't launch.

[Coldmute]

I haven't updated utorrent in so long I've actually forgotten exactly how long it has been.

[marcus5]

those complaining about Ads forget that they are using a free service.

[acidcj]

µTorrent 2.2.1 is still (one of) the best torrent clients.

[ShaunOfTheLive]

[QUOTE=Silverspar;37192101]I've always used Vuze/Azerus and preferred it to utorrent, It's lightweight and runs in Java.[/QUOTE]

Ugh no, Vuze always seemed bloated and shitty to me. I switched to uTorrent as soon as Azureus became Vuze.

[Jdeedler]

[QUOTE=The golden;37192126]So you guy use their service for free without giving them any financial support or any donations and then when then add advertisements to make money you throw a shitfit?

Holy shit talk about self-entitlement.[/QUOTE]

Because when I want to torrent something I sure want to be paying the MPAA in ad revenue.

[ShaunOfTheLive]

[QUOTE=The golden;37192152]Using a free service to most likely download illegal software.

And they think they're entitled to it. Get your head out of your asses people.[/QUOTE]

They just need to make an ad-free paid version of uTorrent, so we can torrent it.

[hamsterjuice]

[QUOTE=The golden;37192126]So you guy use their service for free without giving them any financial support or any donations and then when then add advertisements to make money you throw a shitfit?

Holy shit talk about self-entitlement.[/QUOTE]

i totally agree but people don't like ads and avoid them like the plague so that kind of reaction is kinda predictable

[Zeldabro]

[QUOTE=The golden;37192152]Using a free service to most likely download illegal software.

And they think they're entitled to it. Get your head out of your asses people.[/QUOTE]

no thanks i think i will use my adfree -insert another free and probably better program-

they're just making a really dumb decision, no-ones being entitling, just switching to another program

[Jdeedler]

[QUOTE=The golden;37192179]Simple solution - don't click or use the advertisements.[/QUOTE]

Even better solution , Switch to a better product.

[hamsterjuice]

who doesn't want to earn 400$ a day working at home?
or win a million dollars for visiting a website
ads are actually kinda cool

[Coldmute]

Honestly, I am rather obsessive about avoiding ads/commercials. I'll drop everything I'm doing and go out of my way just to avoid them. There has only ever been one ad I enjoyed, and it was the original Magic Bullet infomercial for some reason. I actually looked forward to it. And they don't show it any more.

[DemonDog]

[QUOTE=IdiotStorm;37192044]solution: never update µTorrent[/QUOTE]

I don't think I've updated it since I downloaded it. Years and years ago.

[Computermaster]

Honestly, the only reason I'm pissed is because the original point of utorrent was to be small, unbloated, and fast. It was bad enough when they started adding in these apps and shit, but displaying ads (that are apparently going to be reading what you're torrenting) is just extra bullshit we don't need. I think the only torrent client that's ever pissed me off more is BitComet, which used to add like 30 MB of "padding files" to torrents that would get downloaded if you weren't using BitComet.

[Peachy]

[QUOTE=The golden;37192126]So you guy use their service for free without giving them any financial support or any donations and then when then add advertisements to make money you throw a shitfit?

Holy shit talk about self-entitlement.[/QUOTE]

Do you not understand the concept of torrenting?
It's not like the company is paying for bandwidth or anything, they could set it down and never touch the program again and it would work indefinitely.