In terms of visitor traffic Cyberlockers have taken over the file-sharing lead from BitTorrent sites. This trend has been developing over the last few years and has accelerated in recent months to a position where the number of one-click hosting sites that are larger than The Pirate Bay in terms of traffic has grown to five. All signs indicate that file-storage services are becoming the new sharing standard.
For more than half a decade, starting in the mid 2000s, BitTorrent sites dominated the file-sharing space. Early 2007 Mininova was the first BitTorrent site to earn a place among the top 100 most-visited sites on the Internet, and soon thereafter they were joined by The Pirate Bay.
In the years that followed BitTorrent sites continued to dominate, but in the background cyberlockers were catching up, and catching up fast. One of the most popular sites of this nature has always been RapidShare. But although RapidShare has always been as least as popular as BitTorrent sites, there were relatively few competitors.
This situation changed in the last two years though. Where most BitTorrent sites were seeing moderate growth, several new cyberlockers saw their traffic surge. In the last year the number of cyberlocker sites that have outgrown The Pirate Bay in terms of traffic has expanded to five, and that’s just the beginning.
Megaupload, Hotfile, 4Shared, Mediafire and RapidShare are all listed in the top 100 most visited sites on the Internet before The Pirate Bay, and newcomers such as Fileserve are eager to do the same. It is worth noting and exemplary of the growing trend that half of these sites are younger than 2 years.
This dominant position of cyberlockers hasn’t gone unnoticed to the outside world. In a report (pdf) published by MarkMonitor today it is concluded that RapidShare is the leading ‘digital piracy’ site with over 13 billion yearly visitors, followed by Megaupload with close to 5 billion visits.
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