BitTorrent doubles Sync userbase to 2 million in a month, says it’s growing twice as fast as Dropbox did

BitTorrent today announced its Sync file synchronization tool has hit 2 million users, just a month after passing the 1 million user milestone. Exactly 30 days ago, BitTorrent released a new version of its Sync client, as well as an API, undoubtedly helping boost its userbase.

BitTorrent also believes that concerns about the vulnerability of the cloud has also been a contributing factor to Sync’s remarkable growth. More specifically, the revelations of NSA abuses and dragnet data collection have helped drive adoption, the company says.

In its first eight months, BitTorrent Sync has grown more rapidly than Dropbox did in its first eight months. In fact, Sync is growing twice as fast as Dropbox:

BitTorrent also conducted internal tests over a local network and found Sync to be up to seven times faster than Dropbox. It’s clear that BitTorrent has set its crosshairs on Dropbox, as Filezilla isn’t even mentioned by the company, although it was included in its tests:

BitTorrent argues that this is the future: “This is how Sync works. And this is how the Internet should work. A world where your data stays yours. A world where the free flow of information isn’t subjected to speed limits. And a world where your information isn’t subject to surveillance.”

Here is another comparison point BitTorrent wants to underline: Sync is now moving over 20GB per person, while Dropbox’s cloud-based platform stores less than 0.42GB per user. That being said, moving data and simply storing it isn’t the same thing (so the company’s “moving 40x as much data” claim doesn’t really hold).

Nevertheless, it’s still an interesting comparison to make. If you’re uploading something to Dropbox, chances are you’ll be downloading it back to another device sooner or later. It’s too bad Dropbox doesn’t share how much data users actually transfer, so we can really see how well Sync stacks up.

We have contacted Dropbox in regards to these statements. We will update this article if we hear back.

See also – With over 1 million users and 30PB synced, BitTorrent speeds up Sync, adds iPad support, and debuts an API and BitTorrent reveals Sync, a new file synchronization tool that could compete with Dropbox and iCloud

Image Credit: fDhooghe