With New CEO, Can BitTorrent Figure Out A Business?

Posted by coolblaze | November 10th, 2008

BitTorrent Inc., a company built around the open-source, peer-to-peer file sharing technology, has a new look: CEO Doug Walker is out, replaced by former CTO Eric Klinker; and the company fired about half its staff last week. With little success to show for the $46 million it’s raised, can Klinker finally do something that will make BitTorrent some money?

If you recall, in the last few years, BitTorrent has had many business plans:

* A digital movie store, which never caught on.
* A content delivery platform, which hasn’t caught on.
* A set-top box platform, which hasn’t caught on.

Cofounder Ashwin Navin, who’s quitting to start a startup incubator, told the Wall Street Journal that the company plans to go back to its roots and focus more on technology, rather than content deals. But he didn’t offer any specifics.

To be sure, it hasn’t necessarily been easy for BitTorrent Inc. We’re sure many Big Media execs are still nervous about getting too close to the P2P technology that’s responsible for a huge portion of Internet piracy — legitimate corporate structure or not. And Comcast (CMCSA) made an ugly scene earlier this year after it was busted for disrupting many of its subscribers’ BitTorrent file transfers.

So… what’s next?

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