After the much-publicized lawsuits of the mid-2000s, Ares Galaxy became, for a while, the number one P2P filesharing software in the world. But somewhere in 2009, its popularity clearly began to wane, at least in the English-speaking countries of the world.
There appears to be a small resurgence going on since about the mid of 2011, but we must ask ourselves, why all these dramatic ups and downs in the popularity of a program, which has been in a stable release since 14 month ago, and is, objectively speaking, superior to most of its competitors on the market? In this article, we will explore a few theories.
The facts
First of all, a few clarifications. The dramatic swings in Ares Galaxy’s popularity are a matter of degree only. At over 300 million downloads over the years, our free Ares Galaxy download can clearly not be called anything but a gigantic success. What we mean by “a drop in popularity”, is a drop in the amount of new users who install our free Ares download.
The millions of old users who are already part of the network are not, and can not, be included in these statistics. But still, it is a fact that the rate of new installations has slowed down over the past years, although in recent months this trend seems to be reversing itself.
(Average worldwide traffic for “Ares Galaxy”)
The competition-theory
The most obvious way of explaining the differences in search traffic and interest in our program over the years requires a look at the competition. Over its whole lifespan, Ares Galaxy has had to compete with some other hugely successful P2P industry giants such as Limewire, Kazaa and eMule.
Some of the waning of our popularity is without a doubt due to the (temporary) success of our competitors, and some of the spikes in the statistics can be explained by the downfall of centralized networks such as Limewire, which suddenly caused many users to look for alternative filesharing programs.
We believe, and we think the facts support us in this belief, that our program is superior to other P2P programs, and that we will win out in the end. There is one great competitor though that stands out above all others..
Bittorrent
Probably one of the most successful innovations of the last decade, bittorrent has taken the world by storm, and we believe that a lot of people interested in P2P technology are passing up on our program in favor of bittorrent clients. This is a mistake though, because one of the reasons Ares Galaxy is so great is because it combines both the bittorrent and the Ares Galaxy network in one easy-to-use program!
The word-of-mouth-theory
Lastly, we have studied the statistics more closely and have found that there is great geographical disparity in the users of Ares Galaxy. Though most users were once to be found in the English-speaking countries, a disproportional part of the new users has come from Spanish-speaking and, even more recently, North-African countries.
We have noticed that these users are especially active on the chat (whereas Anglophones tend to prefer focusing exclusively on the filesharing). Perhaps some of the swings in popularity have to do with people trying the program and then telling their friends and family about it, which would explain the tendency of our program to spread from country to country over time.
Conclusion
Though it is instructive to think about the underlying reasons for the swings in popularity of Ares Galaxy, ultimately, it’s not essential. Most likely, it is due to a combination of competitive, geographical and other factors, but whichever trend we are experiencing, we will not let it affect us in any way.
Millions have already chosen us, because the features of our program speak for themselves, and millions more will, so join them and download Ares Galaxy!