IMVU = There lite?

Yet another visual chat system is making the break for mainstream acceptance. This one is called IMVU. The neat thing about is it that it sits on top of a range of Instant Message clients and though its in Beta it seems fairly stable. Like many other things virtual IMVU has its own currency Avatar Dollars (AV$) and allows users to buy and sell clothing and accessories.

Team TN, well Betsy and I, have been road testing the software – see screen shot on right of our intense user test procedure in full flow.

The There link?

Well I have not been able to track down anything official yet, but if you do a whois on the domain you find that it is owned by The Will Harvey Company in CA and just how many Will Harvey’s working on vitual words can there be. Oh and the avatars floating chat bubbles are seem to be give away.

Comments

[F. Randall Farmer]

1.

I have it on good authority that IMVU is all new code (not based on the There.com engine) even if Will Harvey is the founder of both companies.

It is interesting to compare this to those old VRML based avatar chats from the bad-old-90's: Black Sun/Blaxxun, Oz, etc.

Randy

[Betsy Book]

2.

And here's a shot of me and Ren sitting in the "Buckstars" room, curiously reminiscent of a well known American coffeehouse. A not so subtle hint at potential future sponsorship opportunities. Buckstars and the "rooftop" background are two of the four 3D backgrounds currently available.

The avatars are definitely from the There gene pool although they are not exactly the same, more like siblings or cousins. The avatar choices are interesting - a male and female set called "Urbanette" and "Urbo" that are based on anime style with large heads and eyes. Urbanette and Urbo are clearly geared towards a younger crowd, with calculatedly "hip" clothing choices. I couldn't help but notice the striking visual similarity between these avs and the distorted fictional "models" used for the latest Steve Madden ads. Anyway...at first I tried an urbanette avatar (IMVU description reads "she's bubbly!" lol) but found the freakishly large size of my head too disturbing so I changed to the second set of avatar styles for women called "Statuette" for women. Statuette's male counterpart is "Statuesque."

The user interface needs some work. As you can see in the full screen view in the thumbnail above, the application launches itself in a separate window, so you are chatting in a regular IM window but the mini-vw space of IMVU is a separate window that mimics the conversation you're having in the IM. I tried inviting a third party into our Buckstars coffeehouse but it wouldn't hold more than two. What it did instead was open up a separate window with a separate Buckstars. So at that point I had 4 windows open - 2 for me and Ren and 2 for the other chatter. This led to a very weird feeling of having multiple identities - a striking visual example of the previously abstracted experience of holding multiple IM conversations at once. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's just impractical if your goal is to have a larger group conversation. But it definitely did feel more "personal" than a regular IM conversation. It was cool to be able to "see" Ren while talking to him.

So now what I would be interested in hearing from TN readers is....would you consider this sort of application a "virtual world"? Or is this better classified as a new category altogether? Do multiple, tiny, personal metaverses meet your definition of a virtual world?

[ren]

3.

Oh Betsy and I also tried the poses and animations. We found the poses to be gendered, and erm, needing some work.

For my part as soon as I’d looked at the background I then just looked at AIM as that’s where I was typing, so imuv was fun for about 30s.

I think the fact that one can only get two people into a space at a time means that it is at the very edge of being a virtual world, also its not really persistent in the way that we think that MMOs are.

[Eric Ries]

4.

Hey ren & other folks,

Thanks for checking out our product and posting your comments. We really thrive on feedback :)

I used to be an engineer at There. Now I'm in charge of the technology at IMVU. As somebody's already posted, all of our technology is completely new. Everything you see in IMVU today is something that we've built in the last four months. Now, I can't take credit for having written every line; we rely quite heavily on numerous open source and free software projects that make our accelerated development schedule possible. I'd like to call special attention to: Cal3d, Boost.Python, and osCommerce, which along with many others have contributed to our success.

Like I said, I'm thrilled to hear your thoughts, suggestions, comments, and criticisms. Please feel free to get in touch with me if you have any, and thanks again for trying IMVU.

Eric Ries (eric-at-imvu.com)

[weasel]

5.

This looks curiously like something I'd mentioned as being likely not too long ago. ;)

All it needs now, is user-customizable personal virtual locales for chat and it'll be all set.

And while I'm still pessimistic about its commercial potential - best of luck.

[Nathan Combs]

6.

Ren>

it is at the very edge of being a virtual world, also its not really persistent in the way that we think that MMOs are.

Betsy>

So at that point I had 4 windows open - 2 for me and Ren and 2 for the other chatter. This led to a very weird feeling of having multiple identities - a striking visual example of the previously abstracted experience of holding multiple IM conversations at once. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's just impractical if your goal is to have a larger group conversation.

Per Ren's aside, I know "persistence" is often mentioned as a measure of a virtual world - in game worlds "state" may be required to convey sense of continuity across players sessions and player groupings... a world. I wonder though if the same is for these types of social worlds... the state that seems relevant is the head of the participants.

Personally, I likely would find Betsy's observation to be the larger distraction of a "world perspective."

[Nathan Combs]

7.

Correction:

Nathan>

...in game worlds "state" may be required...

...in game worlds preservation of state may be required...

[Betsy Book]

8.

We've talked before about the the basic features of virtual worlds which include things like shared space, persistence, emergence, feedback loop with RL. According to these parameters IMVU doesn't quite fit, which is actually what makes it so interesting imo.

It's missing the big P - persistence. The background setting and your avatar's outfit can be customized during conversations with each person on your buddy list and automatically stored, so I can be chatting with Ren as a yuppified looking coffee drinker in Buckstars but at the same time I can also be chatting with another friend on a rooftop wearing kickass leather boots and it will continue to wrap those visuals around any future conversation with that person until I tell it to do otherwise. So it's persistent from a customizable setting perspective but as far as I can tell nothing happens in your little Buckstars mini-world while you're not inhabiting it. Maybe you could put that on your to-do list, Eric. That wouldn't be difficult would it?

I'm kidding.

Anyway....

IMVU is shared, but in more of a massively distributed way than a massively singular way. I can talk to 10 people at once in IMVU but I'll be doing it thru 10 different windows. It would be fun to try this sometime.

Emergence (defined by Jerry as "the unscripted interaction of individual users produces complex markets, cultures, institutions and other higher level "hive" organizations"). Hmmm....it could happen I suppose. Memes could certainly travel across the multiple little 2-person bubbles but it would probably take longer for them to propagate across the community. Would be fascinating to see this happen.

It's got the feedback loop with RL going on though. Get virtual objects by buying avatar dollars with real money and then use those to purchase virtual objects. Yep, that sounds familiar.

[Eric Ries]

9.

>So it's persistent from a customizable setting
>perspective but as far as I can tell nothing
>happens in your little Buckstars mini-world
>while you're not inhabiting it. Maybe you could
>put that on your to-do list, Eric. That wouldn't
>be difficult would it?

I actually think this is a fascinating idea. We've certainly got plans to enable rooms (and other environments) to be customized with furniture, decorations, art, etc. We're also looking forward to allowing developers to create interactive experiences, including adventure and social games, as part of rooms. What we haven't focused on is persistence. Do you have some thoughts about how that could work?

[Eric Ries]

10.

>So it's persistent from a customizable setting
>perspective but as far as I can tell nothing
>happens in your little Buckstars mini-world
>while you're not inhabiting it. Maybe you could
>put that on your to-do list, Eric. That wouldn't
>be difficult would it?

I actually think this is a fascinating idea. We've certainly got plans to enable rooms (and other environments) to be customized with furniture, decorations, art, etc. We're also looking forward to allowing developers to create interactive experiences, including adventure and social games, as part of rooms. What we haven't focused on is persistence. Do you have some thoughts about how that could work?

[Betsy Book]

11.

IMVU could approach the big P in 2 ways:

1) Let people visit and leave messages and objects for their buddies in their private rooms even when the buddy is away. Like email, this would allow delayed, ongoing communication not limited by the need to be immediately present.

2) Allow each user to own a multi-person persistent chat room that holds 6-7 people in addition to the private individual buddy rooms. Let them control the settings for making the room open to all, open just to buddies, closed to all, etc. along with the related but separate option of whether their room remains open while they are not occupying it.

If you could add features like this then imo IMVU would not only be a virtual world application but would be a fascinating new category of virtual worlds that emphasizes one-to-one and small group relationships over the one large world concept. Instead of being dumped into one large world to explore and then move to private, smaller groups with the friends you make, you're starting out with all the buddies you already know and bringing them into a small, distributed, private virtual world spaces. It's an interesting reversal. It's also something that would more likely be centered from a social perspective on RL relationships since buddy lists are primarily made up of people you already know in RL.

BTW, you have likely seen this already but the new Pew Report on Instant Messaging released yesterday has some interesting data about IM usage. This seems to bode particularly well:

"Instant messengers utilize IM not only as a way to expand and remain connected their social circle, but also as a form of self-expression, through use of customized away messages, profiles and buddy icons."