Why izimi will obsolete file upload websites
I remember not so many years ago we were told we would never get more than 128K over copper wire. The renowned authorities told us this was the reason that the growth of the Internet into the home would always be limited because of the lack of fast connectivity that businesses enjoyed. The upstarts countered by pointing to the enormous investments that the telcos and the pure-play ISPs were putting into the market: it wouldn’t be long before we would in fact have as much as 512k, possibly more, in every home!!!
The experts scoffed; no matter how much investment was put into the backbones and local exchanges, there was no way the infrastructure providers were going to dig up the routes from the exchanges to the individual houses in order to lay fibre. No way. This was known as the problem of ‘the last mile’. The maximum speed over copper had been reached, we had hit the limit. The established wisdom was very clear on this point.
I tell this story to, a story of very recent history, to highlight the perils of predicting the future based on the evidence of today, because whilst izimi has its supporters it too has some critics who dismiss it as a pipe dream. Izimi, and technologies like it, will play a BIG part in the future of the internet, but as with any innovation there are people who just don’t know it yet.
I got involved in izimi in May 2006. It’s a long story, but to cut it short let me just say that a few smart people that I greatly respected asked me to come along and help them turn a piece of clever technology into a user product, something that helped people do some of the things they were already doing but faster, easier, better. When I saw the vision I was taken by the simplicity of it all. Izimi does away with middlemen, and turns on its head the notion that you must first upload your content to a third party website in order for others to be able to see it. Now, it’s fair to say that the technically adept were doing this anyway with static IP addresses and web servers, but your average internet user doesn’t have the knowledge to do this, so they have to rely on the third parties. The accepted wisdom is this: if I want to share something widely, I upload it to someone else’s servers, get a URL, and my friends use that URL to get to my stuff. OK, so there are upload managers for some of these sites, tools that make the upload process work in the background, but it’s still a kludge, a substitute for doing it yourself.
What is the internet all about? I’d say that the answer you get depends upon who you speak to and what vested interests they hold, but for me there’s a large dose of information empowerment and personal freedom involved. The internet is not heavily regulated, nor should it be, but there are corporations out there whose entire businesses are built upon owning, or at least controlling, our data, our lives. This will increasingly become a problem as the implications for the loss of control of our personal data become clearer. If we voluntarily give it away now, we become more dependent upon these giants simply to continue to operate. We get dependent, unable to move, its called supplier lock-in. Without us even knowing it we are giving over control, and losing our independence.
I believe the Internet should remain unregulated, power to the people if you will, and technologies like izimi, that let us do the very things that these third party store-and-serve providers, keep us free. Jeez, I’m an idealistic b******. But can my idealism really work, or do the technical limitations of today put a spanner in the works? Good question, and one that you can help me answer. Read on.
Business guru and VC Francis McInerney, who describes himself as a “futurist, strategist and realist”, has a similar view on all this:
“Basically, Izimi obsoletes YouTube. This is a phenomenon I advised customers about over a decade ago when I demonstrated that when information costs fall far enough, strange things happen… By disintermediating social networks like YouTube, Izimi precludes the strategy of Viacom of forcing social networks to pay for material that can no longer be copyrighted. Izimi software lets individuals syndicate whatever they want, from whomever they want, without using intermediaries like YouTube. This impels copyright owners to attack their customers, tens of millions at a time, or to create copyright-free business models.” (http://www.northriver.com/blog/2007/03/07/izimi/)
What does all this mean? Well, the same forces operate in every business sector, and it goes like this: as the speed of business increases, driven by the availability of better and easier-to-use tools (generally technology) among those further down the supply chain, those who occupied the middle and upper tiers of the supply chain find themselves becoming marginalised, driven out, or at least forced to radically change their business models. It’s tempting to think that this doesn’t apply to our sector, the media/information/technology sector, and so we need not consider it, but the truth is it does.
We are in the information business, and what this means to us is this: “speed of business” means the speed of information flow, “availability of better easier to use tools” means technologies like izimi that help the laymen do what previously only the techies could do, “those further down the supply chain” means you and I, the information consumers and producers. In fact the effect is amplified in our sector because its less of a supply chain, and more of a supply net/web: with the advent of UGC (user generated content) the consumers and producers sit right next to one another, on the same tier, and those intermediaries that provide the service of store-and-serve of our content are the guys who have seen a need, seen a niche brought about by slow and unreliable internet connections, the behaviour of old school users who turn off their computers at night, and made a business for themselves by occupying the middle ground.
Well, guess what? The times they are a-changing, and now we have reliable and fast internet connections, computers that are increasingly doing more than just getting email or writing letters – and we are increasingly leaving them on – and software that lets us share files, not just to a closed group who have also downloaded the same software as us but with anyone on the internet with just a web browser, with just a few mouse clicks. Suddenly the masses can easily do what previously only the technically adept were able to do. So, izimi is not the established model, it is an innovative way to do what hundreds of millions of people have been doing for years – just faster (in fact instant), simpler, and free.
How is the product to use? Well, we got a lot of beta user feedback over the last few months, and it’s very humbling when you discover how supportive and how constructive beta users can be. For instance, we definitely need to improve the UI: it’s too clunky and takes too many clicks to publish one file right now. We also need to make it simpler to publish multiple files, and we need support for private sharing (today its all publicly indexed on izimi.com).
Are there practical challenges? Yes. There are a few, for example: what happens when I turn my machine off? What about the speed of serving content? What about transfer limits imposed by my ISP?
Does izimi have the answers? Yes, I believe we have many of them, and we’ll see technical solutions to these rolled out in short order. (We still have a few unknowns, and I have an idea to post some of those for discussion in the Openbusiness forum in the next few days – I think they would make for some stimulating debate)
I’d like to thank our existing users for their feedback to date, and also let you know that there’s a whole heap of new stuff and tweaks coming in June with the next version. I’d also like to invite more Minibar and Openbusiness fans to come take a look and tell me what you think – if you get the current version at http://www.izimi.com/ you’ll have a baseline against which to compare the next release. I’d love to hear your thoughts so please feel free to mail me (david at izimi dot com) or collar me at the next Minibar.
David Ingram
Website: www.izimi.com
My blog: www.dpingram.com
9 Responses to “Why izimi will obsolete file upload websites”
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Looks good and i’ll definitely try it out.
In the words of a very smart man: what’s your business model?
Hi Michael
Ahh yes, a smart question indeed.
One part of izimi is public sharing of files through the website izimi.com (NB: in this first release all content is public, so its all indexed on izimi.com), we aim to present ads through the public website. Later we may intorduce some pro features available to subscription users, and later still allow for trading in digital assets (but thats a little way off) where izimi becomes the marketplace.
Hope that sheds some light.
Regards
David
A provocative question :
In what ways does Izimi solve a problem, that any p2p filesharing or bittorrent client doesn’t solve?
Hi
Though I do understand that Izimi is progress in terms of offering the ability to share files with friends, colleagues and family and its different to other p2p or webbased services avaiable, but how and why is it easier than FTP, or transferring files via email?
Hi Morten, let me address your question first, then Christian’s.
Re comparison with P2P and torrents, you need to remember that with p2p and torrents BOTH parties (lets call them content ‘producer’ and ‘consumer’ – although these days the line is becoming blurred as many of us do both) require client software. This means the use to which your shared content can be put is limited. p2p and torrents are GREAT for finding and getting media (and other file content) as long as you have the client. By contrast izimi only requires the producer to have any special software, and the files that are shared can be accessed via any standard web browser. This means the uses for izimi are a little different, certainly not intended to compete with p2p and torrents. For example, you can allow anyone to see stuff – they dont need to download any client. You can embed content in other websites, much as though it was hosted on a true webserver.
This also runs nicely into Christian’s question: how is it easier than FTP or transferring files by email? Let me break that one up, firstly, FTP. Well, I’d say if you are technically adept (as many in thsi forum will be, but that is certainly not representative of the whole population) FTP is pretty simple. In fact, izimi is, for the non-techy user, most comparable to using FTP for the techy user – by that I mean when you FTP content to a server you can then use it in any number of ways by using referring URLs – the same ways that izimi allows. The problem for anyone without the tech knowledge is that in order to use FTP in this way you must first buy your hosting from a service provider, then you need to understand how to use that hosting space and how to FTP to it. Then you have to know how to construct URLs for the content that you FTP up there. (If you are referring to a person FTPing a file(s) to another person’s FTP environment then thats not like izimi at all, thats very point to point, a single-time trsnasaction if you will.
As regards transferring files by email, well, we all know that is very simple – no arguement there – but again its one-time (even with multiple adressees its one time, transactional). izimi is not so much about that person to person, point to point transferring of files. Its more about making a file universally (and persistently) availbable for you to use in any number of ways. One way may be letting people know a URL(s) so they can get the file(s), another way is to use the file in other web pages as a link or an embed, you then have the concept of public sharing into izimi.com (so this means people you dont alrteady know – and by nature you can be emailing them as you dont know them), and of course you have (or I should say *will* have in June) private sharing so your shared stuff is not broadcast to the website.
What I am saying is that if you are talking about getting a file, or a small number of files point to point then maybe email (or dropsend for larger files) will be great for you. If you want to find media that others have previously shared using P2P then you may decide to download limewire, bit torrent, emule, etc. If you want to be publishing/sharing files with people publically and privately, some known but many unknown, using the content in webpages (like you r blog, forum, social space, etc) AND you are technbically aware then FTP will be great for you. But, if you are not technically adept, then izimi provides a way to let you do what you might otherwise use FTP and hosting to do without having to learn anything new. Oh yes, and its instant, so you dont have to sit and wait while your FTP client chunks all your files up to the FTP server.
All the best,
D
oh, i guess that begs the question of why you just dont use any of the upload websites that have sprung up to provide the means to embed content into other websites, like photobucket or box. Well, the answer is twofold, firstly they dictate what you can share and what you cant (file type, size, quality, quantity). Secondly you have to wait for files to upload again, so your stuff is just not available until its finished uploading. Today, while bandwidth is still a limiting factor those solutions do provide advantages for large files, and they also provide resilience, but what I am getting at is dont judge the future based upon todays limitations. My argument is that once we have always-on devices and fast broadband (go look up VDSL and FIOS, and check out the speed that the emerging world powers are getting, eg Korea) the role of this intermediary gets eroded. When you can do it yourself, why use someone else.
)
(Geez, is anyone still awake after that diatribe –
Thanks, David. It is very interesting to hear your thoughts on this. I understand now what you can do with Izimi, which makes it different from p2p. Yet a browser is also still a “client” software package, not that much different from other types of “clients” – even though the web has made it almost synonymous with the internet for most people.
Anyway, I can relate a lot to your focus on putting control into the hands of the end user. Intermediaries which act like like filters are out, IMHO, however, intermediaries, which act as helpful web services, which can do things cheaper and more efficiently than an individual, and help give users control and freedom with smart APIs and other tools – I believe they have lots of possibilities.
In a way we’re in the same business. I am involved in a startup which will facilitate the distribution of niche files. We _will_ be based on an upload system, to make the distribution speedy, consistent and reliable – and to be able to collect and distribute the metadata in our distribution system. Files are readily accessible to anyone, anywhere, anytime. We face technological choices, which are similar to yours.
One interesting question is, if it will still be important to keep files locally with higher speed connections? Or will they make us just more independent and mobile, and depend even more on GMail, Flickr, and online accessories for our work and storage, reducing the laptop to a powerful terminal? I suspect both things could be right.
Morton said… “One interesting question is, if it will still be important to keep files locally with higher speed connections? Or will they make us just more independent and mobile, and depend even more on GMail, Flickr, and online accessories for our work and storage, reducing the laptop to a powerful terminal? I suspect both things could be right. “ …
Boy, I’d love to have a time machine
. I imagine it’ll be neither fully one way or the other, as you say, i suspct both could be right. It guess it could depend upon the application, there is rarely a one-size-fits-all these days.
All the best, D
Bonjourno, Mr. David Ingram ..
It is a pleasure to meet you & make your ( online ) acquaintance.
Your post has been quite a great read, and your enthusiasm is
very tangible as well. I will make this a short post w/ the hope that
it will be resumed ( so few are ). A couple questions come to mind,
( it is my nature ) however; they will not be of the genre: negative
or ‘ sounds good, BUT ‘ – as I am sure you well know , sooo
many are, my Question(s) is / are … ( i hope you dont mind )
1. Who came up with / decided upon the name: izimi ?
2. Are you currently able to devote yourself to this
project full-time, if not do you hope or intend to
in the future ?
3. Finally, if a person were perhaps, maybe interested
in finding out more about these beta tests, maybe
even in participating.. ( i know of a few individuals
who would likely be ideal for this project, ideal for
both sides ).
I look forward to your futures posts, but now it’s time
to have a look at this new ( to me ) blog I just heard
about: http://www.DPIngram.com ~
Best to You,
General5491
( Fabio )
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