Instant Media, Miro Competitor, Leaves The Net Without A Trace

Recognize the name Instant Media? No? Well, to get you a little familiar with it, you only really need to know two things: It?s a competitor of Miro, previously known as Democracy Player; and it?s dead.

I?ll be perfectly honest with you. I know very little about Instant Media. Almost nothing. Only about a half hour prior to getting to write this piece did I get some facts about the product up on my screen. So, really I pretty much know as little about it as the next guy or gal. Nonetheless, I thought it might be appropriate to put together a little something-something anyway, mostly to address why the news of the software?s sudden exit (a la Sunrocket, if you will), despite being less than tremendous, shouldn?t go away quite so fast.

If you place Instant Media in a side-by-side comparison with Miro, it?s clear which is the more popular of the two. I?M, as it?s called for short, peaked at 750,000 registered users sometime back in late ?06. And its important to note that that moment of success was a short lived one, despite the service having been around for many season prior to that point. Miro, on the other hand, managed to get itself, well, considerably more fans, and in a relatively short time frame, to boot. Clearly the team behind one was doing something right while the other was…not. That could very well be reason alone for Instant Media?s bowing out, as it were.

But it didn?t ?bow out?, did it? It strangely just disappeared. Its creators/managers simply ?took it off the air,? without any notice whatsoever. Really, all that they?ve left in their wake is a two-word notice of ?under construction? (a phrase too vague to denote good or bad news). That?s it. Under construction. That?s all we?ve got.

Bizarre. Remember that this is a Scott Blum creation we?re talking of. The founder of Buy.com, a hugely successful Internet retail outfit. He was on a Forbes Top 40 list some time ago, whatever that counts for. And he?s completely mum about this whole thing.

Personally, I couldn?t care less how the wind blows on this issue. I don?t use Instant Media, never have. But some out there in Web 2.0 land that likely did use it before Scott Blum and gang fled town. As little noise has been made about it, it?s clearly not going to leave the best of marks on the man?s reputation, and sooner or later, he?s going to have to explain why Instant Media was removed from the Web without any advanced warning whatsoever.

It?s one thing to admit defeat and move on. It?s another to go the way of the dodo without leaving an intelligible note whatsoever as to why it didn?t quite work out in the end.

This reeks of bad business, through and through.