Izimi Offers File Sharing and Social Networking

Posted on June 27, 2007

Izimi is a combination social network and file sharing service that lets you share photos, documents, vidoes and music with others. Venture Beat compares to Avvenu, a file-sharing service they reviewed earlier.

It also creates a public Web page for you, which lists all the content you have created. Let's say you create URL for some videos to send to your sister. Izimi puts a link to the videos at your Web page too, so other friends can see what you've been sharing. That's where the YouTube-like element comes in.
In other words, Izimi has two heads: One is a straight-forward file sharing application, and the second is a profile-based social network (see partial screen shot below). You can add friends to your profile, for example, and click through to see their content.
Right now, everything is for public viewing. It is all searchable at Izimi's home page. You can't share things privately. However, that doesn't mean once you've published something, it is open for all to see forever. You can choose to "unpublish" something, and it goes away. Izimi says it is working on a feature to send things privately, to be released soon.

File-sharing services are starting to replace email for some Internet users. It is probably a smart idea to combine it with a social networking service. Private sharing will be popular once Izimi makes it available. The only downside is web users have to be concerned about security if they are allowing any kind of access to files on their computer or laptop.