In BitTorrent terms, TorrentIt has quite a long history. The tracker started out in 2004 as 123Torrents. In early 2005, they lost the 123Torrents domain, and while negotiating to get it back, took on the domain torrentit.com. When negotiations failed, they decided to keep the TorrentIt name, and applied it to the newly created pirate theme for the site.
TorrentIt, which had 27,000 members at its peak, was known for having a large mix of scene and non-scene torrents, and for a very tight community. In April 2006, BREIN went after the original owner, who lived in the Netherlands, forcing the shutdown of the site under legal pressure. The TorrentIt crew decided it was better to take the site down than to have him take the heat, and took the site down.
Almost a year later in January 2007, some of the former staff members decided to bring the site back, under a new domain, one not attached to the original owner. The intention was to open by the end of May, but that never happened. The deadline was missed, and it took more than a year before the site was ready for its official relaunch.
BlastGT1, one of the original crew members, and an Admiral (equivalent to SysOp) at the new site told TorrentFreak: “Unfortunately, due to real life commitments, we missed that deadline, and after months of stagnation, I took it upon myself to find good coders within the torrent community who could help us finish the site, and try to repair the damage we had done to TiT’s good name.”
TorrentIt teamed up with the coders from DigitalHive, who were looking to start a new side project themselves, and this eventually led to the long awaited resurrection of the tracker. “Now, we’re back with a different domain, a different source and the drive to succeed,” BlastGT1 said.
“We don’t care about racing sites for pre times, we don’t care about having the biggest userbase. We care about having quality torrents, scene and non-scene, and most of all, we care about community. That is what made TorrentIt stand out before, and so many are already loving its return, finding their cabins kept warm and cozy,” BlastGT1 added.
The new and improved tracker changed its domain extension from .info to .eu, and now runs on Gazelle. Two days ago, they sent out almost 10K invites to former members, and many of them have joined the new site since. Unfortunately, an invite is needed to sign up, so not everybody will be able to celebrate and participate.
BlastGT1 has a word of advice for newcomers though: “Bide your time, get a good honest reputation elsewhere, have patience like people did once upon a time. Sooner or later you’ll make the right friend and snag an invite.”
