Vortex Network - Mac Tracker Nearing Its End?
January 31, 10 by sharky 4,342 views
It’s all the rage these days for private trackers to softly threaten their members into donating in order to keep the site afloat. This strategy isn’t entirely new, but the rising trend suggests that the onus is being shifted towards a majority of members who aren’t willfully donating. VortexNetwork, or "eye of the storm" is the latest tracker with one foot in the grave due to a lack of funds, and is scheduled to shut down as early as tomorrow if donation targets aren’t met by the end of January.
More than ever before, members are being held responsible for sustaining trackers that can’t properly monetize themselves without a steady flow of donations or other fund-raising ideas. All sorts of trackers are doing this - past & present - just read the news; both SqN & ScL have been on the brink of extinction recently. In the case of ScL - here’s a tracker that almost predictably goes offline towards the end of each fiscal month. Even good "niche" trackers such as Comic-Releech & Animatoonic simply couldn’t go on bleeding red forever.
Source below: Vortex homepage. Site Update: 25 January 2010:
….unless something changes in the next 5 days, we will be ceasing operations at the end of the January. Over the last five months, we have consistently failed to reached our donations goals. As a result, it was necessary to tap the site savings to cover the monthly hosting fees. If we see a surge of donations to cover the hosting we will continue, if not then we won’t. It is as simple as that. Before someone starts a flame thread, let us make this perfectly clear. We are not begging for donations, merely stating the facts. If it comes to pass that we cease operations, please know that we have enjoyed your patronage, friendship and participation.
Regards,
~The Vortex Network Staff
It’s unknown - but doubtful - that Vortex can weather the storm, as their donation target is still stuck at 5%.
Compared to other trackers that are struggling, Vortex is in a class of their own.
- • The site was never ‘open publicly for registration’, although potential members could request an invite through an interview in their IRC channel.
- • Vortex had some unfavorable publicity in reference to the original owner, which clearly hurt their popularity. No question that if people hadn’t heard about Vortex before that post, they surely had now.
- • Few people know about them. They have a policy whereby its URL is forbidden to be used publicly, "To protect the community we respectfully ask that all users refer to the site as ‘The Eye of The Storm’ when referring to it in any medium that is not between two users of the site." Apparently this is (or was) enforced strongly as shown in this old warning:
VortexNetwork - Stats
Vortex’s popularity has been on a steady decline as of late, as evidenced by the following stats:
- • Had an Alexa Rank of 300,534 on March 23rd, 2009. Today, it’s 532,438.
- • Had 6,636 members in July 2008, which slid to 5,732 in March ‘09. Today, Vortex has just 2,925 members.
- • Total number of indexed torrents have dropped by a count of nearly 500 over the past nine months. Today, there are just 69 leechers for 2,228 total torrents.
| Stats: July 2008 | Stats: January 2010 |
 |
 |
Lack of activity means less torrents; less torrents = fewer members. Less members = fewer donating members (as a percentage). Unless Vortex either throws up some form of advertising or else opens registration publicly to get new blood, there won’t be any tracker soon.
©2007-2010 • 
01 • Gonzo Says: 31.01.10 at 1:09 pm
I know 3 other trackers for Mac stuff - an OS that is used by maybe 5%. Maybe there just isnt a need for more than 1 or 2? Besides, you get all Mac stuff at general trackers/what/waffles/…
02 • Yocto_is_irfan Says: 31.01.10 at 1:45 pm
fcuk you spam commentator gonzp
kiss my crotch
in demonoid not in some lame so called private trackers my ass
http://www.demonoid.com/users/irfanmd
bad luc see u all there
yours
Yocto
03 • Jerry Stewell Says: 31.01.10 at 5:06 pm
NO way dude, Mac Tracker will never freakin die!
Jerry
04 • iamse7en Says: 31.01.10 at 8:42 pm
Big mac user here. I’m a member at the 3 major mac trackers. I consistently stopped going to Vortex - They usually didn’t have the latest software, and they didn’t have as good as a collection as BS. I pretty much stopped going to vortex, and my account has been disabled due to inactivity. I had a feeling this site would eventually die.
BS is clearly the best, but STC is a good site too.
05 • hillk Says: 31.01.10 at 8:55 pm
1 word: BrokenStones. its way better and it always has exactly what my mac wants.
06 • Blackest Night Says: 31.01.10 at 9:53 pm
Oh, now Sharky will be banned because he uttered the name that’s been forsworn to only the 33rd degree…..”Vortex” LOL
07 • DVD Says: 31.01.10 at 11:42 pm
I’m afraid you can’ call a tracker “good” if it doesn’t last (at least if it’s due to not having enough donations). It wasn’t good *enough* if its users didn’t value it enough to donate and keep it alive.
LOL.
Please…
08 • DVD Says: 31.01.10 at 11:44 pm
Well, I guess I didn’t really think that through…it might be “good” on its own but there might just be something better and it can’t compete….it’s all about whether it’s good enough or not…
09 • Kim Says: 01.02.10 at 10:51 am
Good riddance.. Another shitty site begging for money..
You know you’re on a good tracker when their donation progress is 100%+ every month and have never had to ask for a single penny from their members.
010 • The Torrent Celebrity Says: 02.02.10 at 12:49 am
Being I am on EVERY major and great tracker including “Eye of the Storm” I have seen issues in many of them regarding funds and user bases. At “KIM” STFU first of no1 was begging for money, they were only being upfront and informing it’s users that if donations did not significantly increase there would be a cease in operations. Secondly, with a tightly sewn members list and the tracker being “That Exclusive” it’s hard to meet quota when you have most of the members donating already and its just not enough. Thirdly, at “KIM” SOMEONE is donating that PENNY every single month JUST NOT YOU! STFU and come back and talk shit when you get off demonoid and onto a real tracker. Finally at “DVD” There is no definition of a “Good” tracker. Each tracker is specific to its own content. THIS is why there are so many trackers out there, some trackers don’t have content others do. So that being said you cannot justify your answer, being that in the “Eye of the Storm’s” case maybe it was TOO good… being too exclusive for mostly anyone to get into… including yourself.
Courtesies and Good Night,
~The Torrent Celebrity
011 • kola Says: 02.02.10 at 5:20 am
wht is the irc invite channel name
012 • Bob Says: 03.02.10 at 4:52 pm
Vortex ended up being awful - it’s so dead in there. I’m surprised my account is still enabled there. Anyway, without question BS FTW!!
013 • SteveH Says: 04.02.10 at 3:04 am
Mebbe the original scheme behind Vortex might have worked if there was no alternative mac-tracker - as a sort-of paysite.
. . . but it ended up, as Bob says, a sad dead place, with grumpy admin.
The moment BS was back up & running Vortex was doomed.
014 • .:RM:. Says: 04.02.10 at 4:48 am
BOB: I would bet that you never contributed anything to their site either. No I am not talking about cash, but ideas, conversations, etc. Anyone can leech a site dry, which sadly it would seem has happened.
SteveH: Grumpy Admin? I have never seen any of the admins be anything but fair. Even when I was told “no” about something, it was done in a courteous manner. Mactus on several occasions went so far as to explain his reasoning.
I saw several threads suggesting ads, which anyone with a brain knows is generally a bad idea for a torrent site. I also saw threads that suggested what amounts to a pay to leech scheme, which if I recall correctly, started the original blowup when their site first launched. From my reading, the users were given every opportunity to change the outcome.
RM
015 • graffus Says: 04.02.10 at 8:25 am
i am on a lot of private tracker and in all the best for mac.. vortex was not a tracker full of bad admins.. but they didn’t work a lot for the users!
I see on STC the admins work a lot, fix bugs, whitelist clients fast, partecipate in forums…all these facts didn’t happening in vortex.. the site started dying in july 2008 when was the big hustle of vortex members and admins.. and went down slowly ’cause the admins and sysops and moderators never wanted to take a decision on their path… never wanted to implement something new!
(Now i want to remember that STC is good but a month ago the best admin, magical, leaved the tracker and then they asked for money telling”we are dying!”)
Hope Stc will live ever!
016 • SteveH Says: 04.02.10 at 11:38 am
RM - grumpy was not necessarily a criticism & certainly doesn’t exclude fairness; but I guess we might agree that Vortex never developed beyond the look ‘n feel of its original scheme.
Those comical Romanesque ‘ranks’ dragged emptily on . . .
017 • Truth Says: 07.02.10 at 11:23 am
Brokenstones is the shit!
018 • yeah Says: 08.02.10 at 11:07 am
BS ftw!! stc for the second win!