It followed in the footsteps of Napster and limewire as a P2P client, primarily for sharing music. Unlike its predecessors, it survived basically unchanged for the last decades, basically just flying under the radar.
I still recommend it, though I think Nicotine+ is a better client (its a different frontend for the same network). It's not necessarily better than torrenting, just different. It also has chatrooms which I used to quite enjoy as a youngster back in the early 2000s.