[news=http://www.slyck.com/newspics/exeem.gif]eXeem came into the file-sharing world like a lion. It was heralded as the great savior of BitTorrent - a new protocol that would decentralize vulnerable indexing trackers. During the early winter month of December, the MPAA on behalf it its member companies began its crusade against eDonkey2000 and BitTorrent indexing sites. One of the purported casualties of this campaign was SuprNova.org, the largest BitTorrent listing site.
SuprNova was never sued. Sloncek, the administrator of SuprNova, stated the current state of affairs in the eDonkey2000 and BitTorrent indexing world was too risky, and pulled the plug on December 19, 2004.
"SuprNova.org was more like a hobby that took most of my free time away. And now with current situation, there’s too much pressure and I don’t have the time for it."
Although SuprNova was offline, news began circulating about his new project, eXeem. With the promise of a decentralized tracking network, the loss of SuprNova and many other indexing sites appeared mitigated.
The success of eXeem appeared promising. Yet on December 30, 2004, details regarding the project were finally revealed. It was learned eXeem was closed source, controlled by a company named “Swarm Systems”, and was little more than a decentralized network. In fact, it had virtually nothing to do with BitTorrent, as Bram Cohen would later say eXeem was “completely irrelevant."
Despite all of this, perhaps the greatest disappointment was the inclusion of the dubious adware component better known as Cydoor. Although Cydoor is not as evil as it once was, its still is responsible for directing targeted advertising. This means that it still reports browsing habits to send pertinent advertisements. Despite improving itself, Cydoor continues to be associated with a dark and undesirable aspect of the Internet. The inclusion of this component would spell an early doom to the eXeem project.
With endless ridicule and isolation from the P2P community, eXeem was forced to drop Cydoor within a month of its launch. It would be one of the worst marketing disasters in the history of file-sharing. Never-the-less, eXeem had a reasonable following, yet technical problems would later consume this project.
Today, the eXeem website is off line, as it has been for the last several weeks. Sloncek, the public relations representative of eXeem, has been notably quiet on this issue. Slyck managed to catch up with Sloncek, who revealed he is no longer involved with the project.
“I don’t have time for it...The company that was behind it made 1.0 but is unsure on what they will do with it, since they moved on to other projects. They might release it as open source. I don’t know.”
A dubious future indeed. As a viable commercial product, eXeem is in all likelihood finished. With Sloncek out of the picture, Swarm Systems lost their only link with the file-sharing world. What started with such great promise is now just a memory.
:source: Source: http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=963[/news]
