We first talked about Imeem end of last year, when they described their vision of distributed social networking: "We're not building a website that you have to join in order to be part of a community. With imeem, you will be able to decide who to interact with, and how you want to communicate." Today sees the public release of the desktop client for plugging into the network, so I've gone and had a peep. One thing I have to say off the bat annoyed me — if you take the product tour from their website, at the end of it the Imeem software starts automagically downloading to your desktop. This is a big no-no anyway, but even worse — the software is only compatible with Windows XP and I was browsing the site from a Mac. But it gets better from here, I promise.

Update: Imeem CEO Dalton Caldwell says a Mac client is on its way in the near near future!

Update #2: They've also now removed the automagic download action at the end of the product tour. How's that for response time?

I switched over to my Windows PC and had a look around. The interface is nice and cleanly designed, intuitive and easy to use. You can keep a blog, share photos and files, and join groups called “Meems” which is a play on Richard Dawkins’ concept of the meme and seem to work essentially like forums with threaded discussion, with the very cool addition of a real-time chat aspect.

The three main things I find interesting about Imeem are its distributed nature — instead of uploading content to a central server, you’re sharing it from your own desktop; its focus on privacy/permissions — you’ve got five different levels of access control for the content you’re sharing: private, friends only, friends of friends, all of Imeem, and world (web-published); and its focus on integrating all of this with real-time chat. Because the desktop client is so new, I haven’t had time to hunt down anyone else I know who’s using the service. If you’re trying it out and want to connect with me, just search for “barb dybwad” and I’m game to try out the one-on-one and Meem group chat aspects of the software.

A couple of drawbacks — no Mac client! No word on whether one is planned, but I seriously hope this is coming. Luckily, one is on the way shortly. One more thing — I couldn’t find a way to just browse the available Meems. You can search for Meems, and apparently browse the Meems your friends are part of, but I didn’t see a way to just browse all the available Meems. Am I missing something?