imeem Wants to Simplify Its Service - Deletes All User-Generated Photos and Videos
imeem, which describes itself as the "world's largest social music service," just told its community members that it plans to delete all photos and videos that users have uploaded to their profiles and groups on Jun 30th. imeem argues that it is doing this in order to simplify the service and focus on the service's core social music features. According to imeem, user-generated photos and videos weren't very popular on the site and cost a lot to host and stream. In a comment that sounds similar to what we've been hearing from other social media sites, imeem also argues that "there's no ROI for us in UGV," as advertisers just aren't very interested in seeing their content next to amateur videos.
Update: Matt Graves, imeem's VP of marketing and communications, left a comment below. Comments on the imeem blog post are now open, VIP subscribers will be able to get a refund.
The original post continues below:
Unhappy Users and VIPs
It's not surprising, however, that imeem's users are quite vocal about their dissatisfaction with the service's decision to delete the photo and video collections that many have poured quite a few hours of work into over the years. A lot of users are especially outraged by this because they specifically subscribed to imeem's VIP service in order to upload more of their own videos and photos. It's also noteworthy that imeem isn't giving users an easy way to download their content from the site. While users could right-click on every picture and save it to their desktop, there is currently no way to download videos from the site.
Not Handled Well
Overall, we would have to side with imeem's users and it doesn't look like the company is handling this current affair very well. Comments on the blog post are closed, nobody from imeem's staff (as far as we can see) is interacting with customers on imeem's forums, and the service isn't giving paying customers a chance to get a refund. imeem, of course, is under some pressure to make a profit at some point, and the service's relationship with the music industry has been rather rocky lately, but this decision to give users only five days of warning before deleting their content on the site just feels like a textbook case for how not to manage your user community.
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i think that this is very unfortunate for Imeem users . Even the reason for this is not that sound.
Imeem is probably facing financial troubles and closing in on bankruptcy. This is a classic case of a company in decline: selling one service to their members and then taking it away due to rising costs or smaller revenue streams (which is what is happening to imeem). Basically, imeem will no longer be a social network, but just another distribution point for existing music labels in the mode of iTunes or Rhapsody, so, in essence they have given up their core business model of being a social network instead of competitor to the big boys. Oops.
I run marketing for imeem. Saw your post and wanted to add in some perspective.
First, as you’re seeing from feedback on our forums, the imeem community cares deeply about imeem. They’re passionate --and vocal-- about their feelings (good and bad) whenever we make changes to the site. So today’s response was not unexpected.
I want people to know we *are* listening to the feedback they’re leaving on our forums, and that our team is actively engaged in answering their questions about what’s changing, and why. We are, in fact, offering refunds to VIP subscribers who are unhappy about the changes; VIP subscribers can drop a note to VIP-support@imeem.com requesting a refund. We have also opened comments on the “Simplifying imeem” post on our blog so people have a chance to let us know what they think.
As we said in our blog post yesterday, we’re making these changes in direct response to feedback we’ve gotten from the community, not only from what they have told us they want from imeem but from their actual behavior on the site.
To put things in perspective, less than one-tenth of 1% of imeem’s overall pageviews are photo-related. And playback of user-uploaded videos represents a similarly small percentage of users’ overall activity on imeem. Streaming music and creating music playlists are imeem’s defining features, and they’re far and away the most popular activities on the site. That’s where we’ve chosen to put our focus going forward.
I also wanted to respond to Wangerlai’s comment – imeem is doing fine from a financial standpoint. We recently closed a new round of funding, and our ad sales team is crushing it in 2009; they hit their Q1 numbers and beat their Q2 numbers, despite the down economy, and we’re continuing to see strong interest from major brands in getting involved in imeem.
One final note, re: letting people download videos from the site: we can’t give people the ability to download the videos they have uploaded to the site; we don’t own that content and thus don’t have the rights to let people download it -- that’s a licensing issue, not an imeem issue.
Hope this helps people understand more about next week’s changes.
To put things in perspective, less than one-tenth of 1% of imeem’s overall pageviews are photo-related. And playback of user-uploaded videos represents a similarly small percentage of users’ overall activity on imeem.
If this is such a small percentage of the user activity, why not just leave it as it is, instead of employing Imeem's continual nibbling away, like little foxes, of options in that arena? First, ads over the videos; then, no embeds; now "we're throwing your work into the garbage on June 30." Not to mention almost-impossible-to-find contact info. (In the past, when I *did* write to Imeem about one of my transformative works being pulled off the site, I received a vague reply that "someone complained about it." I lost my hit count, which was in the thousands, my comments, everything. I put the work back up, and it has remained there, ostensibly till June 30. I bring this up to illustrate how there's a failure to communicate and Imeem just doesn't care anyway.)
When I joined Imeem a few years ago, it was all about social networking and UGC. Now it's Top 40 radio, complete with overreaching ads and musical monotony. I'm very disappointed in Imeem. It's just reached critical mass now, and I'm out of there.
I'm a VIP user and contrary to the statements of the marketing person, I emailed and was told flat out that Imeem "cannot" refund me. It was a very terse email with no explanation.
I joined Imeem in August last year and have had over 1.5 million hits of content I've uploaded since which has surely helped Imeem and its adviews. With the removal of my content on June 30, Imeem will lose my 1500 music files, 200 videos, and 100 photos as sources of revenue.
Matt Graves the director of marketing does a good job of deflecting the issue and stating unsubstantiated claims of fiscal health. This June 11 article at Reuters clearly states the company may not survive till the end of the year despite its recent influx of money from investors.
Imeem Raised About $2.4 Million; Still Looking For More - http://www.reuters.com/article/paiddealsAtoms/idUS340412894020090612
Quote: "But industry observers have said this money may not be enough to help the company last till the end of this year, unless it is able to raise more money and improve revenues from advertising."
Another Reuters article about the potential financial problems facing Imeem including rebuttal from Matt Graves (that talks about number of campaigns and not profitiability).
Better Licensing Terms May Not Be Enough To Save Imeem
Responding to a few commenters in a single post:
Michael Stamper: the changes we're making do NOT apply to user-uploaded music. The MP3s you've uploaded will continue to be available.
Giandujukiss: please send me a mail at mattATimeemDOTcom with your username. We'll make sure you're refunded.
Luminosity: usage of user-generated photos and videos are part of the calculus here, but there are other factors -- including engineering time for maintaining features -- to keep in mind.
This isn't a decision we took lightly, and we wouldn't make it if we didn't think it was the right one for the long-term growth of the business.
In Response to Matt:
I have no confidence in Imeem's ability to keep my music in the future either as it was written in the FAQ and site repeatedly about unlimited photo and several hundred video uploads.
I will be removing my entire account, asking for a refund AGAIN (which was rejected by imeem yesterday when I requested it), and moving on to a site for musical artists that keeps promises and will be financially able to meet its commitments and promises.
I know Matt is just doing his job to respond to Imeem user dissatisfaction, but actions and performance speak louder than words.
Michael -- sorry to hear that. If you send me a note, I'll make sure you're refunded.
Michael,
You should call directly the company of your credit card.
And they will fix it for you.
Every person I know got all the same answer.
They do not refund in any circonstance.
Everybody got the same answer from Imeem support.
And I seriously don't think that Mister Graves gonna respond and take care of every persons who's wrote him.
Be serious you have thousand and thousand user's who already want a refund.
Amanda -- That is wrong; you have bad information. We have offered full refunds to any affected VIP subscriber who has contacted us via our VIP-support@imeem.com alias within the past 24 hours.
Put imeem into deadpool. They're done.
When a company gives a delay of 5 days without advance notice to destroy all the work of several hours, days, months and years, it will be very difficult to believe that you go paid off all people without any problems. Especially that you use at every moment and I quote: " We have offered full refunds to any ''affected'' VIP subscriber ", already the problems are just announced. We have to see if it will be so easy to have those refunds as you said it so easily.
On every forums which you have on the site of the dissatisfaction of the users which give you so possible options, nobody was considered.And to put more on this alot of forums was deleted by you Imeem,forum who peoples told their options and who wants answer.
Have you take some time to think about all those DJ and new musical groups which form and incidentally who attracts new users ceaselessly by being able to see their shows or video or simply to see in photography?
I also noticed that there was a lot of PORNOGRAPHY on your site.
Then logically this idea didn't cross you'r mind to make a cleaning of all this contents?That can be SUCH a big difference in upload.
Of course not, you've made the simplest decision which was imperative by destroying EVERYTHING .
And you gonna say to me that is professional?
It's like I presented myself in a house I set fire to their memories and objects which have values for them, and I said to the tenants " don't worry I only want to put the place more clean and easier to access ".!!
Like a said before some user's got so many options proposed there and who make a lot of sense but you don't take any of your time to considerated it.
So just stop lying by saying that you read everthing and take those options in consideration.
Look 5 days to the users is a violation of their rights.
To take a decison to destroy the private properties of people is a violation also.
What is very sad in some companies thoses days it's that they have very often some people who got a post in a company who have no profile of the employment and who have no skills required to have it.And make decision like we got now!
What brings then decay of a company.
I almost forgot Mister Graves,don't tell me i'm wrong or I have false informations cause I have the proof in front of me.
But its true since you got so many complains you go right away change you'r response to user's by saying they gonna be refund.
Everything you say already it make no sense at all so I'm not gonna waste my time anymore on people who doesn't know how to do their job.
So good luck too you... you will need it with all the anger you got on your site.
I'm probably the only one that thinks this is a smart play for imeem. They had a best in class music and playlist service, and started to dilute with it with features you could get on any social network. They've finally figured out what their value proposition is and are focusing on it.
Having used imeem quite a bit, I was always frustrated that you would login trying to create a playlist and were confronted with all of these Facebook-esque features you had absolutely no interest in. Actually finding where to upload a playlist was an additional few clicks that were unclear. Removing all of this generic social network content from their site will probably fix a lot of usability issues, save them some money, and allow them to focus on their core product.
It sounds like it was a tough decision, and certainly it will make some users unhappy, but it's the right strategy for them.
Casey
You'r so out of the subject right now.
There's no problem at all with playlist or music.
The problem is about deleted evrything those user's put on their profile.
And like you said''you've been there for a quit a bit''
Here we talking about thousand and thousand user's who got all of their stuff the worked for it being deleted for no valuable reason at all with all the options the could have.
Great Amanda,
And I agree my your words written here
Imeem responded they returned the money
but I do not want my money, why not trust o credit card
a company that is lying,
Goodbye Amanda
Matt Graves: One final note, re: letting people download videos from the site: we can’t give people the ability to download the videos they have uploaded to the site; we don’t own that content and thus don’t have the rights to let people download it -- that’s a licensing issue, not an imeem issue.
This is a really strange comment. You accepted a user's upload, and presumably let them play that upload, and now protest you don't have rights to let that have his file back?
Every social site TOS I've seen either claims rights for the company uploaded to (you), or leaves rights with the uploader (the user). If you don't have the rights, and the user doesn't have the rights, who does?
Casey - imeem was not actually founded as a music service, and they were not music-focused when I joined.
Hundreds if not thousands of people in my community go to imeem solely to watch (user-created) videos. I am appalled at the dismissive way that imeem is treating its users.
5 days warning — on a blog post, no less — is really rude and it is not enough time to relocate all of our user-created and user-uploaded content. We will be losing comments, view counts, interpersonal relationships, thousands of playlists and more. When Ning booted their Red Light District they gave 35 days notice — SEVEN TIMES LONGER.
I have copies of my own video and photos, but this will remove my ability to access videos made by other people. Thousands of browser and delicious bookmarks are instantly dead. Links embedded in academic journals, scholarly articles, and blog posts: dead. Favorites: disappeared. Playlists: disappeared.
I use imeem solely to access user-created video content (including Luminosity's, Gianduja Kiss's, and par avion's awesome videos!), and I am completely appalled by imeem's decision. O.K., fine, shut down the main service you're known for; I don't really know if it's safer for you to compete with Pandora and Last.fm instead of YouTube. (FWIW, Google aggressively tracks down copyrighted music used in videos without considering transformative or fair use, so imeem is better for a lot of remix artists.)
But this is a ridiculously small amount of lead time. All of my bookmarks on delicious? Are to the imeem pages. (In retrospect, probably should've bookmarked the LJ posts instead anyway, but I can't be the only person to make that decision. After all, the New York Times did.) I know people who've said they don't have their original videos anymore, that the only place they're stored is on imeem--these are videos that are well-known parts of fannish history, gone forever. (And I can't believe you won't even let the original uploaders download their own content; how could there possibly be a legal issue with that? There are ways to download streaming video content like from imeem and YouTube, yes, but it's nowhere near as easy, or legal, probably.) Giving a few days' notice--not even making much of an effort to get the notification to users--is completely insufficient.
And if imeem is this incompetent when it comes to providing the service they're known for--when it comes to even just canceling the service they're known for, even Yahoo is doing a better job with shutting down Geocities--how can it be trusted with its other services? Why would I start uploading playlists or encouraging other people to do so if I'm worried these will be so cavalierly discarded as a potential revenue stream some time in the future? ("We will delete all user-generated playlists in one week's time, as a way of simplifying imeem even further. Advertisers, of course, will still be able to create and share their playlists...")
Not cool Matt.
That's it I'm done with those dudes. Looking seriously at transferring all my music to mecanto.com.
We just posted to the imeem blog with an update on the upcoming changes to user-uploaded video and photos.
I've enclosed a link below; the big update is we're delaying removal of our photo storage until Weds. July 15, giving people more time to transition their photos.
The post also gives more info on refunds for VIP subscribers and perspective on how we're handling video removal.
http://blog.imeem.com/2009/06/28/were-listening-update-on-next-weeks-changes/
THis sucks i am a 2 year user on Imeem and i loved it there. I have so much freinds on there. Lets hope its fixed so i dont and my freinds dont lose anything. I pray for Imeem.
I have uploaded a few videos - my own work - to imeem, along with many music tracks - also my own work, but I also have most of them on MySpace and YouTube. I link my music playlist to MySpace, so I would miss them if they were deleted, but I would NEVER rely solely on an on-line provider to store my work! Surely nobody in their right mind would not keep a copy of what they have uploaded on their own computer?
As for pictures - apart from my avatar image I really don't care what happens to them - I have them stored in so many different places! I get tired of people sending me endless pictures that are of no interest to me and having to delete the messages.
With respect to Mr Graves; ouch, dripping w/ irony, the company is clearly in a death spiral. "Simplify service" = we're doing just fine. Nothing to see (burning buildings) please remain calm. I imagine Imeem will continue to "simplify" services and go to dot com hell. Too bad because I used to love Imeem, as of a couple days ago!
I deleted my account today which was averaging 6000 hits a day for Imeem and had over 1400 songs. Imeem has failed to meet its advertised services (videos/photos) or listen to users. I loved Imeem and invested too much time in a site that is clearly close to financial failure. Like a divorce with a spouse who continues to lie and abuse, it is time to move on to a more financially stable site that will listen to its paying customers.
Can anyone suggest another site for our photos and videos?
I hate Imeem for tricking me to pay them for VIP status and promises of video and photo uploads only to have some management guy decide just to delete everything. 2 years of my life wasted on Imeem and all my family and friends comments on our family videos and photos just deleted in the blink of an eye EVEN THOUGH I was a VIP member? Even if they refund my fee (I hope they actually do), the fraud committed on my time and faith is already done. Imeem is such a scam and they are fools if they think we went there for music only. That is why we have Itunes.
I just started working a few days ago and i was out of the net for a while. When i start using it again i go check my pictures on imeem (i had a few songs but lots of pictures) they were all gone. I am not a vip user,i know i cant get a refund.
I work at cust svc and i know somethings cannot be told to customers for an example "we are going to bankrupcy" we will know it sooner or later; but to tell your clients that you are doing fine and that you will delete all of the contents coz you are symplifying, thats rude. But everybody is smart enough to see whats going on.
mr graves i lost all of my images, i have to ask you... is there anyway to still get them back? there is something i have been trying but its too hard so i had to ask you.
hoe on Earth you can say that you listening
to your Members !!!???
When you would we believe the sooo stupid chances would be never made so don't tell such a crap.
A other thing what to aspect from a company they have Scientology on there Side that means they are direct or indirect with the "Banksters" !!!
From my understanding, Imeem "simplified" their service after the Snocap deal which would make sure artists received comp for their music. Imeem WAS in trouble because the RIAA was raking IMEEM over the coals but when they had their foot on IMEEMS neck, they softened their stance and worked out an amicable agreement.
Of course, IMEEM couldn't afford to operate at the current rate. So I would assume to maximize profits they had to streamline the service (i.e doing away with pictures, videos and other bandwidth hogging material) to reduce overhead.
So, I don't think IMEEM is in danger of being sent to dot com hell. I think they are taking a pretty insightful business approach and I commend them for switching gears. The core user group they want, apparently, is solely for music.
In the beginning, IMEEM traffic was fueled largely on the MySpace widget. When MySpace blocked IMEEEM's widget it took a little hit. But with the emergence of Facebook and Twitter, the impact is hugely absorbed and will only be further cushioned with the growth of the aforementioned. So this minimizes or even eliminates the need for IMEEM to do battle with MySpace for hits by offering picture and video webhosting.
Now, with all that being said.... I still think IMEEM dropped the ball with the handling of their user base. Some people will never forget being slighted while others are more empathetic. Me personally, I love IMEEM and I was granted a VIP account. For what? I have no idea... But all in all... it is THE site for music and music only.. I think they did a bold business move in transforming the site into that of a purist experience.