BitTorrent Live Promises Speedy Distributed Live Streaming

BitTorrent, the company behind the popular file sharing protocol but also the very popular uTorrent client, is looking at ways to make money from its technology but also to expand its use.

BitTorrent, in essence, is a distribution method and, with a built-in audience of over 100 million people, it could be a great way of making your content known to a lot of people, if it weren't for the stigma of being associated mostly with piracy.

But technology, at its core, is just technology, it can be used for 'good' the same as it can be used for 'bad.' And BitTorrent is a great technology.

It all stems from the idea that, if all of those trying to access content pitch in, then there will be no huge strain on just one source, in the traditional sense, the server.

Now, BitTorrent creator, Bram Cohen is working on applying the same idea to live video streaming. With a distributed method, any site with even the most basic capabilities could serve thousands even millions of people with the same ease.

But Cohen has been working for the past three years on the new protocol and there's still a lot more to be done.

The BitTorrent protocol itself proved too laggy to work with live streaming, since it was designed to move big amounts of content in big volumes, but not instantly fast.

BitTorrent Live is now closer to being a reality than ever, the company has just held its first public streaming test with DJ and producer Janaka Selekta.

This was nothing more than a first scale test of the technology and a first attempt at actual live streaming, as opposed to streaming pre-recorded video as before. BitTorrent still has work ahead of it before BitTorrent Live is a viable alternative, but the promise is quite interesting.

For now, you can grab the beta version of BitTorrent Live if you want to check it out, but it would be purely out of curiosity and to help out the team, there's not much else you can do with it currently.