Hulu Recaps 2011, Looks Forward to 2012
Hulu posted a recap of the year behind us on its official blog, noting that, from 2010, it grew the business 60% to approximately $420 million in revenue. The company also said it now has more than 1.5 million paying subscribers and it expects similarly fast growth in 2012.
More Web Services Consider SOPA Blackouts
After social media site Reddit announced a 12-hour blackout in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), several other web services have announced similar blackouts. Tucows will join in the anti-SOPA party, and Wikipedia may do it, too, if it overcomes some organizational obstacles. The big question is: will Google and Facebook follow suit?
The Pirate Bay to Stop Serving Torrents
The resilient torrent site The Pirate Bay plans to stop serving torrents at some point in the future and replace them with so-called magnet links, which essentially allow users to download information contained in a .torrent file directly from a peer. From now on, torrents and magnet links will co-exist on The Pirate Bay, with magnet links being the default.
This will allow The Pirate Bay to operate using less bandwidth. On the user side of things, since most popular BitTorrent clients today support magnet links, end users won't feel much difference from this change.