ExtraTorrent
ExtraTorrent logo, as of November 2016
Type of site
p2p
Available inEnglish
RevenueAdvertisements, donations
URLextratorrent.cc
CommercialYes
RegistrationOptional, free
Launched2006
Current statusClosed as of May 17, 2017; 6 years ago (2017-05-17)
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ExtraTorrent (commonly abbreviated ET) was an online index of digital content of entertainment media and software. Until its shut down it was among the top 5 BitTorrent indexes in the world, where visitors could search, download and contribute magnet links and torrent files, which facilitate peer-to-peer file sharing among users of the BitTorrent protocol.

History

ExtraTorrent was founded in 2006 by the administrator who acted under the alias "SaM".[1]

In November 2016, the website celebrated its 10-year anniversary. The website briefly changed their logo with a celebratory theme and launched a contest for users to guess the most downloaded movies on the site in exchange for prizes.[2]

Shutdown

ExtraTorrent shutdown message on website

On 17 May 2017, ExtraTorrent voluntarily ceased operations out of the blue. The entire website was replaced with a message from the administrator, stating that the website was to shut down permanently (as well as all mirror domains), and wipe all data relating to the website and its content.[3] The website was already down for days due to an emergency maintenance situation, just two days before the website shut down permanently.[4]

At the time of its shutdown, ExtraTorrent's primary domain name was the 291st most viewed website globally, according to statistics from Alexa Internet.[5]

Clones

Shortly after the shutdown of the official ExtraTorrent website, multiple clones and imitations appeared online.[6] Initially, the most popular one of these clones was located at extratorrent.cd. While this was at first speculated to be an official rehosting,[7] it was later discovered to be a re-skinned of The Pirate Bay, serving exact information from their database, under an ExtraTorrent interface.[8][9] Despite this however, the website still quickly gained a large userbase, reaching two million unique visitors in May 2017.[10] To date, there are no new "official" ExtraTorrent mirrors as the database for the original was wiped during its shutdown in 2017.[11] The site was blocked in Spain in 2019, with the blocking of other similar websites such as Lime Torrents and 1337x.[12]

References

  1. ^ "ExtraTorrent website shuts down". The Asian Age. 2017-05-19. Archived from the original on 2019-06-01. Retrieved 2019-06-01.
  2. ^ "Torrent Icon ExtraTorrent Turns Ten Years old Today". TorrentFreak. 2016-11-15. Archived from the original on 2019-06-01. Retrieved 2019-06-01.
  3. ^ "ExtraTorrent Shuts Down For Good". TorrentFreak. 2017-05-17. Archived from the original on 2020-10-29. Retrieved 2020-10-29.
  4. ^ "ExtraTorrent Suffers Extended Downtime (Updated)". TorrentFreak. 2017-05-15. Archived from the original on 2019-06-01. Retrieved 2019-06-01.
  5. ^ "Extratorrent.cc Traffic, Demographics and Competitors - Alexa". 2017-05-17. Archived from the original on 2017-05-17. Retrieved 2019-06-01.
  6. ^ Brown, Aaron (2017-05-31). "ExtraTorrent is BACK, but you might not want to trust the return of this torrent site". Express.co.uk. Archived from the original on 2019-06-01. Retrieved 2019-06-01.
  7. ^ "A Week After Its Death, Extratorrent Is Back Online (Updated)". Digital Music News. 2017-05-22. Archived from the original on 2020-09-22. Retrieved 2019-06-01.
  8. ^ "'Resurrected' Extratorrent Site Turns Out to Be a Scam..." Digital Music News. 2017-05-25. Archived from the original on 2020-09-22. Retrieved 2019-06-01.
  9. ^ Tiwari, Aditya (2017-05-24). "Extratorrent Is Still Dead — Don't Fall For Copycats And The Pirate Bay Mirrors Like Extratorrent.cd". Fossbytes. Archived from the original on 2019-06-01. Retrieved 2019-06-01.
  10. ^ "Extratorrent Clone Extratorrent.cd Is Approaching 10 Million Visitors". Digital Music News. 2017-06-06. Archived from the original on 2020-09-22. Retrieved 2019-06-01.
  11. ^ "No, ExtraTorrent Has Not Been Resurrected". TorrentFreak. 2017-05-24. Archived from the original on 2019-06-01. Retrieved 2019-06-01.
  12. ^ "Court Orders 1337x, LimeTorrents, and More Blocked in Spain". TorrentFreak. 2019-01-31. Archived from the original on 2019-06-01. Retrieved 2019-06-01.
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