Imeem
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- The correct title of this article is imeem. The initial letter is shown capitalized due to technical restrictions.
imeem is a social media service where users interact with each other by watching, posting, and sharing content of all media types, including blogs, photos, audio, and video. In one sense, imeem is a media-centric social network service, and in another sense, it is also a user participation service for online content.
The website has both a social network structure as well as a content browsing/filtering structure similar to that of flickr and youtube. Because user generated content is largely hosted in a unified data model, the same media content can exist in custom profile pages and topic groups (called "meems", which is a twist on the word "meme"), as well as in browsable content channels organized by music, videos, photos, and blogs. A user can rate, comment and tag the public content posted by other users, wherever it may exist on the network.
While many modern social network applications are entirely web based (such as Facebook, Friendster, or Orkut) imeem runs as a website that is tightly integrated with a chat and activity notifier software program. This allows users to have 1-on-1 and group chats with other imeem users and also instant messaging users from other services such as AIM, Yahoo, MSN, and GoogleTalk. In addition, the notification features gives users real-time updates on new activity by users in terms of content posting, commments, linking, etc.
Unlike most social networks, imeem places as much importance on topic groups called "meems" as it does on the individual user's profile. Users can create or join meems, invite others to join, and post media content of all types and respond to any and all groups members. Meems can serve as online communities for artists, bands, clubs, films, schools, festivals, concert tours, friends, and sports enthusiasts.
In terms of content privacy and editing, imeem abides by a user participation model and maintains a set of community guidelines, user flagging of inappropriate content, and a responsive notice-and-takedown policy.
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[edit] Key Media Features
Uploading and sharing of:
- Blogs
- Photos
- Music
- Video
Social tools for all media content:
- all-in-one instant messaging
- commenting
- rating
- tagging
- RSS syndication
- embedding into external sites
- real-time updates and notifications
[edit] Privacy
Privacy levels for content sharing can be set for most types of content.
The levels are:
- Myself
- My friends
- My friends' friends
- All imeem users
- The Internet (web publishable)
Private meems are a special type of meem that allows users to control who sees its contents, providing limited access to discussion forums. Private meems allow sharing of files related to the meem its among members, unlike regular meems, this restricted content gets stored among the peers rather than on the imeem servers, providing complete privacy. meems are either public or private and do not support the security levels afforded to other types of content, however users can set privacy levels on the links they make with people and meems, so that associations may be masked from non-privileged users.
[edit] Content sharing
The imeem website service and software download are based around a user profile, a defined list of friends and meems, and "What's New" notifications that keeps a user updated on changes to closely linked people and meems. Users and meems alike can host blogs, forums, photo albums, music, and video, and of course links to other users and meems. Much of this content can be uploaded and viewed via the web site, the major exception being 'friend-only' content and file shares linked to users and private meems, these exist only on the peer network and do not pass through imeem servers.
[edit] Security
Various schemes are in place to protect the security of imeem users.
The imeem client conducts most of its network activity using an encrypted protocol, making it impossible to monitor user activity.
Conversations via imeems IM functionality and group chats are encrypted and only visible to conversation participants.
On startup the application validates with a central server. This ensures that unauthorized clients cannot connect and run malicious exploits (such as monitoring traffic or spoofing identities) against the network.
Software updates are also delivered via the client and authenticated before they are installed.
