Well as expected, BitTorrent swung the axe over the weekend and let go half (18) of it’s employees. They are also shutting down their WMRM-powered offering, The BitTorrent Entertainment Network. Not too suprising given the company’s lack of traction in the marketplace and the exit of one of their founders. No word from Bram yet on what his role will be moving forward.

Late last night I received this email from Ashwin Navin, the President and Co-Founder of Bit Torrent:

[Email has been edited to shorten length and remove personal info]

Dear Friends,

I am excited to share some news regarding some personal changes at BitTorrent. Back in March, I indicated to my Board of Directors that I’d like to resign from BitTorrent in order to focus on a new venture. I felt comfortable moving on after we as a Board had recruited some strong leadership including a new CEO, CFO, and CTO, and agreed to a transition plan for me. As of several weeks ago, I officially transitioned from Co-Founder & President to a Co-Founder & Board Director.

My BitTorrent tenure certainly didn’t feel like four years, but time flies when working among good people, world-changing ideas, and great fun!

I am excited to continue contributing to BitTorrent as a Board member. The last four years have been a true adventure. We somehow managed to start the company amidst intense competition in the BitTorrent client space and we now have a great executive team focused on the BitTorrent client, DNA and SDK, reference-able partners in each program, a lucrative toolbar deal, and a massive and growing userbase with leading market share. The company is poised to continue its long march to success. Principal among our strengths is an extremely great set of people and trusted network of partners. You’ve all been tremendously good and gracious people to work with; thank you for that!

If you’d like to hear more about my next venture, drop me a note. I’d love to hear from you, and I’ll be sure to keep you updated.

Wishing you all the very best,

Ashwin
[personal email and cell phone# omitted]

Basically Bit Torrent has been a complete disaster as they made an attempt to shed their “piracy-enabler” roots in the hope of becoming a legitimate CDN. At last year’s Streaming Media East show I was very vocal about the proverbial wool that I saw Ashwin and Brian Taptich trying to pull over the attendees heads and they were unable to respond with anything meaningful. I wrote publicly on numerous board that Bit Torrent would never see the light of profitability and their technology was being widely-shunned by the media industry at large.

Really the only route for them to go was the shape-shifting route DivX went where they basically accepted the fact they weren’t going to have customers of their technology so they set out on a 3rd party licensing route. A couple networking vendors adopted the soon-to-be-dead technology and that’s pretty much the only revenue Bit Torrent has. When you see a founder like this leave a company still in the start-up phase it’s more often than not because they saw the writing on the wall.

As I have also said many times before: Bram I think you are one of the great minds of our time and I wish you all the best in your future endeavors.