Izimi: Obsolete File Sharing Program at Launch

I first learned about Izimi from digg.com. I was reading articles about Scientology, and found that one user in particular had submitted mostly pro-Scientology articles, and articles raving about Izimi. I checked out Izimi.com, and found what may be one of the least useful services to debut since the DotCom era.

On it's web site, Izimi describes itself as "the fastest and simplest way for you to share photos, music, videos...anything, straight from your PC" while many of the digg.com articles described it as a "youtube killer." The web site also advertises, "No limits - share any file type, size and any quality". So far so good. It was sounding like youtube.com or imageshack.us with the ability to share any file type.

The next claim however, is what started setting of warning bells. "Faster - just click and instantly share straight from your PC, no upload needed."

How, exactly can you make files available without uploading them?

The next warning bell cam when I realized it was Windows only. You need to download, and run, a Windows application to make all this magic happen.

Here's how it works. You download their application, run it, and from then on, whenever anyone requests the file it gets uploaded from your PC. They brag about you retaining control of your files, and while it isn't explicitly stated on the web site, if your computer isn't on and their application running, the links to your files won't work. No one will be able to download them.

Izimi describes this as "P2P" technology. While technically accurate, it's misleading. Bittorrent, Kazaa, Limewire and other P2P services work by distributing the load. A single file enters the network, and is served up by multiple users. The more popular a file is, the more people will be serving it up.

Their claims of never needing to "upload" the file border on false advertising. You do, in fact upload the file, but instead of uploading it once to a web or file server, it's uploaded from your PC as many times as it's requested. If 10,000 people download your 20 meg video file, that 20 meg file will be uploaded from your PC 10,000 times. The more popular the file, the more bandwidth your computer sucks up and the slower the downloads will be.

With Bittorrent you make a torrent available, and people start downloading it. Once a particular piece of the file is downloaded by another user, that user begins making that file available for download. The more popular a file, the more people are offering up pieces of that file and the faster it downloads.

That kind of cooperative process appears to be missing from Izimi. Your PC is the ONLY source for the file, and it only serves the file while their application is running.

Their "About" page has the following line: "Why do you have to upload your content to other people's servers in order to publish and share it?"

The question is a good one, and there are a LOT of answers.

Server uptime is one of them. My web hosting provided is far more reliable than the folks providing my cable modem connection. They maintain their own servers, scan them for viruses on a regular basis and back them up routinely. If my files are hosted on their servers, they'll be available far more often than ones dependent upon a PC running the brand spanking new Izimi software.

Bandwidth is another reason. A web hosting provider, be they a free service like youtube or a pay service like Prohosting, will have far fatter pipes than a lowly home user sitting behind a firewall or DSL line. University students using their school's T1 from their dorm rooms will be in for a shock if the school justifiably decides to block the Izimi client software. Hundreds of students serving up files eats a LOT of bandwidth for which the school pays.

Service provider contract are another reason. Home Internet service providers often include clauses stating that you won't use the connection to host a web site. Others impose monthly or daily upload or download limits. Izimi would prove problematic for anyone using such a restricted Internet connection. All the problems inherent to file sharing applications such as Bittorrent or Limewire extend to Izimi.

All told, Izimi's only real advantage is that it offers a centralized web site which can be used to peruse shared content. Its aggregation is the only useful aspect of the service, but its dependence upon the uptime of individual PCs is a major Achilles heel. Yes, it means you can stop sharing a file easily, but it also means end users are likely to find a significant portion of the links they click are dead at any given moment.

They have a file sharing service that allows people to download any files without any special software, but to be a viable service, Izimi needs to rectify their dependence upon the uptime of myriad PCs. They also need to ditch the myth of sharing files without uploading them. I'm sure the apologists will claim that since the users never click "Upload" and see a progress dialog telling them the file is transferring that this is somehow "Sharing without uploading" but that argument is a trick of language, and not a description of reality. In a raw technical sense, the files are being uploaded and instead of transferring once, they're being uploaded dozens, hundreds, thousands perhaps millions of times. In place of a relatively short upload process, theIzimi users get treated to a sluggish Internet connection and Lord only knows what performance issues on their PC from the upload client overhead.