'Imeem' opens to compete with 'Facebook'

Move over, Thefacebook. Step aside, LiveJournal. Take a hike, Webshots.\nImeem has officially arrived at IU.\nImeem combines a variety of features already popular through separate Web sites into one download. These include networking, journals, photo albums and chat.\nTed Malone, the vice-president of marketing for imeem, said imeem released its software Friday to those with an "@indiana.edu" e-mail account.\nMalone and his team visited colleges around the country in early December looking for the right colleges at which to start imeem's base. The team chose nine colleges as its trial schools -- Arizona State, IU, Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State, Purdue, Texas, Texas A&M and Western Michigan.\n"When we were looking at launching our product, I decided to select a small number of colleges to make sure it was working well and doing what we wanted it to do," Malone said. "And after visiting IU, I really like its feel for the product."\nIU's success with the networking Web site http//:www.thefacebook.com, which opened to IU in September and now has thousands of students on the network, exhibits the technological environment colleges offer for start-up companies such as imeem.\nMalone said imeem, which is a Spyware-free program still in its initial stages, is more appealing than a site like Thefacebook because it combines popular Internet features into one place.\n"It's good because we have this journal feature, photo feature, a safe file-sharing feature and an (instant message) feature," he said. "It's sort of a one-stop-shop for all of those things. That's sort of a fun feature of it."\nMalone said imeem emphasizes its features are as safe and as private as a user would like them to be. Users can adjust security levels so that only particular people can interact with him or her.\n"We wanted a safe, private network that you could control so that you could be sitting in Starbucks on a wireless network and be talking to someone back in the dorms without having to worry about someone tapping into your conversation," Malone said. "It's kind of creepy to have the Internet at large. We wanted a safer way for people to use the Internet to its fullest potential."\nThe imeem team of 13 full-time employees based in Palo Alto, Calif. has been working on its creation for about a year, Malone said.\nImeem is a venture-backed start-up business, which means a larger company, Morgenthaler Ventures, invested funds to help imeem get on its feet.\n"That makes us a little more legitimate than people who are working on a software system from their garage," Malone said.\nErika Shaffer, a public relations consultant with SutherlandGold, helps imeem get the word out about its software to help the company grow. Though the available release for imeem is a limited version, she said she expects changes to occur continuously.\n"We will always be adding features," she said. "For example, the ability to publish journals as a (Web log) ... and the ability to set varying levels of privacy -- your mom (will be able to) see the pictures of you in your dorm room, but not the ones of you at a party."\nA basic networking feature of the software is a "meem," which is a made-up word signifying a group of users who have a commonality, whether it be professional, social, academic or geographic.\nEd Kellar, a graduate student in the School of Library and Information Sciences, is a member of the IU meem. After finding a flyer for imeem in his mailbox on campus Tuesday, he registered Wednesday and has poked around at the site to see if the features imeem offered could suit him.\n"I'm trying to determine if these features will come in handy," Kellar said in an imeem chat interview. "Being a SLIS student, I try to stay of top of technology."\nKellar said he thinks imeem could grow at IU because technology is constantly changing.\n"People are always looking for new ways to communicate and take old technologies and try to improve on them," he said. "If more people become aware of (imeem), ... it will spread." \n-- Contact Business Editor Lori Snow at losnow@indiana.edu.