BitTorrent Gets a $20M Bite from investors seeking the next big YouTube-like cash-out

In light of Google's $1.65 billion purchase of YouTube, investors are hunting for the next cash-out. Maybe it will be BitTorrent, which announced it has snagged $20 million in venture capital. The investors include Accel Partners and Doll Capital.

BitTorrent is super-sophisticated technology platform that allows for efficient transfers of data (this is accomplished with whiz-bang peer-to-peer technology). In other words, it is a great vehicle to deliver video. It also became a great place to file-share copyrighted content.

But, over the past year, BitTorrent has been clamping-down on this. Of course, that makes the site appealing to traditional content players. In fact, this week, BitTorrent signed licensing deals with a variety of Hollywood players, such as Paramount and MTV.

I interviewed Chase Norlin, who is the CEO of Pixsy, which is a search engine for multimedia content. According to him: "Bittorrent's deals with the studios is just another example of content owners requiring multiple avenues for distribution. Bittorrent seems to have a good start in being the platform for this, but I suspect that there will be multiple distribution channels. Actually, the company in this space that I believe will be a big player in a few years is Comcast."

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and operates DealProfiles.com.