If you’re a BitTorrent user, then the chances are good that you either use uTorrent, or have used it in the past. With 150 million users, the software is the world’s most popular application for downloading from BitTorrent, which means that it’s raking in a tidy sum of money, right?
Well, not necessarily.
After being supported by allowing other developers to bundle their apps alongside the uTorrent installer – though installation of these apps was optional – and getting paid for it, that revenue model was found to be less than solid when some of the apps were flagged by anti-virus software recently, which in turn meant that the uTorrent.exe file itself was classified as malware as well. In the wake of that, and having its website blacklisted in part by Google as a result, the people behind the uTorrent app have started to explore other ways of making money, though it would seem that they aren’t yet sure exactly what that will look like.
While the company stops short of saying that it will start charging for the uTorrent app, it surely has to be one of the options on the table.
In a recent blog post, the uTorrent folks said that they “want to find a way to improve uTorrent for our customers while financially supporting the amazing team that works every day to make uTorrent great.” Quite what that will look like is unclear at this time, however.
There’s one thing that we do know, though – the uTorrent team doesn’t want anything to be behind the scenes here, judging by the three goals it outlined in the aforementioned blog post.
- Continue to make uTorrent the best torrent client available
- Provide our users with clear options for supporting uTorrent (with options for every budget)
- Be open and transparent throughout the entire process
Would you be willing to pay for the next version of uTorrent, or would you prefer something like a new ad-driven model to keep the app afloat? Call us cynical, but we find it hard to believe too many uTorrent fans would want to stump up a reasonable amount of money to keep things ticking over.
We’re ready to be proven wrong, though.
(Source: uTorrent)
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