With the popularity of IMVU now matching Second Life levels, I decided to check IMVU out again after a 4 year absence.

I signed up after IMVU went open beta, and was the 814th person to do so. In those days IMVU was Instant Messenger Viewer Utility. It was a tool that you add to any IM program of your choice, so to use IMVU you had to be using AIM or YIM, and the person you were chatting with must be as well.  Finding people to chat with was difficult. Eventually, they got smart and just started their own IM service for IMVU users to use.

Even after creating their own IM service, I found it annoyng that you could only form a chat with one person, and then add people to the chat.  I prefer to chat wih groups rather than random strangers.

I returned back about a year later to discover they were experimenting with a group chat feature. I liked this, but it was a bit flaky at first. It wasn’t long before I lost interest again, and I pretty much did not have it even installed on my computer for 4 years.

So, after reading the press release about IMVU making money,  having 6 million unique monthly visitors, and traffic equal to Second Life, I had to go check it out again after a long absence.

A lot has changed, so much that I feel like a noobie again.  The biggest change happened in July 2009 when they completely revamped the client program.  In the early days you had to keep 3 windows open to use IMVU: the IM program, the client, and the website.  When they added their own IM service it was reduced to two.  As of July 2009, you only need one.  Shopping, friend finder, group finder, and profiles are all now accessible in the client itself, even through tabs.  It is all organized really well, and Second Life could learn a thing or two, (or three, or four…) from the client.

IMVU now has in my estimation the best 3D client program of any 3D Virtual World I have seen.  Its unfortunate that the bar for this achievement has been set so low.

Since the last time I started IMVU, they have changed the default avatars.  The oversized heads are gone, feet are smaller, and they look more proportional to human normal.  Hands are still big though.

The bad news is that my account still has the old avatar with the big head.  Some would just roll a new avatar with better looks, but in the last 4 years I have collected over half a million game credits through various promotions. Plenty to fix my avatar’s flaws. Its also too cool to have a 3 digit ID number when most have 8 digits.

I have been visiting random rooms, trying to reestablish myself.  I like the rooms with 6 to 8 other people.  I don’t know very many other players so I just dive in and see what people are discussing.  It is mostly just fun blather — the same stuff I find a lot in SL or There.  Part of that is due to the max 10 person limit in all rooms.  The small limit also  forces you to circulate, don’t feel obligated to stay in one place, and don’t get offended if you get booted from a room due to overcrowding.  There are all the usual rooms: roleplay, night clubs, sex play, etc.  Finding stuff you are interested in is not too difficult. Finding people you actually want to hang with is a little more challenging.

I got an “adult pass” years ago, allowing me into all but the VIP rooms.  Rules on the use of adult pass (known as AP) has changed a few times.  For a while there, the only difference between AP and not is the ability to see and say dirty words.  Today nudity is allowed in AP rooms, though it is not as prevalent as one might imagine. People like to dress up a lot. AP is a good way to avoid the “teens” and troublemakers on freebie accounts.

Among the things you can purchase in IMVU is music that you can play in world.  Its about 65 cents a song, but you have to be in a room with someone else to play the music — RIAA rules.  Most of the music comes from emusic.com, so lots of indies, not a lot of mainstream hits. There is some good stuff in there though.

So far I am enjoying the visit, but I have no plans to become one of the IMVU addicts.  My favorite activity in 3DVW’s is to explore, and the format of IMVU is largely anti-explore.  The 10 person per room limit restricts the kinds of events you can have.

Metaverse News IMVU, reviews

The video above is not Google Earth, or Microsoft Virtual Earth. It is a creation of five guys in Britain led by Michael Fotoohi of Micazook.com. They have an ambitious plan of creating the entire planet in 3D navigable by avatars as seen in the video.  They use freely available aerial photography and digital street maps to create their world.  They are hoping to make a combination of Google Earth, Second Life, and Wikipedia.

Sounds like a cool project. More info can be found here.

Media, Metaverse News avatars, googleearth, mirror worlds, virtual worlds

Recently two of the big 3D Virtual Worlds released some numbers of how they are doing, and I thought it might be fun to compare.

IMVU

Population: 40 million registered users
Active: 6 million average monthly uniques
Money Spent (Annual Run Rate) : $25 million
Activity: Users average 1 hour + per day on the site
Peak Traffic: 80,000 simultaneous users online
Other Stats: 770,000 chat sessions per day, and 175,000 virtual items are sold daily
Source

Second Life

Population: Over 20 million registered accounts
Active: Over 1 million unique logins a month,  over 750,000 average monthly repeat logins (logged in at least twice in a month)
Money Spent (Annual Run Rate) : over $500 million
Activity: Users average 1.3 hours + per day on the site
Peak Traffic: Peak Concurrent Users hit 88,065 in April 09
Other Stats: Over 1 million monetary transactions per day
Source and Source

These are very interesting statistics. While I realize that the nature of these two 3DVWs is very different, making meaningful comparisons difficult, they both can claim #1.

IMVU is easily the highest populated, thanks to an aggressive advertising campaign. But, the Second Life economy is about 20 times bigger. Oddly the activity and peak traffic statistics are very similar, so there is no clear winner based on popularity.

Then there are many that question whether or not IMVU is even a virtual world or not. By my broad definition it is, but others consider it a 3D chat program and social network rather than a Virtual World.  Since you can create your own avatar, build your own home, customize both as you see fit, and visit any room you want, its a virtual world in my book. The only significant difference between IMVU and the more narrow definition of virtual world is navigation.  You cannot walk around in rooms, you click on little yellow dots which animate your avatar to a location in the room. You also cannot navigate from room to room.You select an active chat, or create a new one, and you move to a room. Due to the lack of navigation, there is no real estate or vehicles, which explains why its economy is smaller than other virtual worlds.

Some of the statistics are questionable, or at least not directly comparable. IMVU’s active user count seems to be based on sign ins to their website, which is a social network site as well as a portal to the 3D chat, while Second Life’s is purely client logins. The IMVU client allows you to sign in and then wait for a friend to invite you to chat like other IM programs do. That would also skew the “activity” stat above.

Similarly, Second Life’s Activity stat is over inflated due to bots. “Bot” programs keep an avatar logged in daily for long hours, they are used to automate club invites or to model clothing in stores. While bots are a small number of the active user count, they over inflate the time spent in world. According to SL’s own charts 3% of the avatars log in for more than 300 hours a month. That 3% represents 34% of the “activity” in SL.

So are these the two biggest? Well most 3DVW services are a bit stingy with their statistics. About the only thing we have to compare is total accounts (Population), which as you can see above is misleading. No matter how you measure, “active” accounts is always significantly lower than total accounts.

Here are the next five 3DVW’s based on population stats (via kzero.co.uk and other press releases):

PS3 Home 7 million
Free Realms 5 million
Red Light Center 3 million
There 2.5 million
Kaneva 2 million

All others are under 1 million.  Of these five, I suspect There has the most robust economy (possibly bigger than IMVU), but Free Realms is the fastest growing (a million new sign ups a month), and likely the most active these days.

Regardless, it is clear by population alone that IMVU and Second Life’s position as #1 and #2 (or #2 and #1 depending on what stats you use) are safely uncontested at this time.

Metaverse News IMVU, secondlife, virtual economy, virtual worlds

Some strange things in SL news this week.

First up, Second Life has been interested in working with third party partners for a while now, that is no secret.  This week it was discovered what they were doing with these partners.

Dreamland, a privately financed continent created by long time business avatar Ansche Chung, started renting real estate at cheaper than tier levels. People looking into this have found out that Dreamland is purchasing real estate in bulk for a discount rate, and passing on the savings to its customers — which of course is growing because of the cheap rates.  Smaller real estate providers are crying foul!

I totally understand the SL side of this. Offering bulk discounts, or wholesale prices is a regular business practice of many businesses.  In a way this is a sign of Second Life maturing as a company.

I also understand the frustration of the small real estate providers who find themselves at a financial disadvantage. Virtual real estate is not a good thing to be into these days, prices across the grid are low, and getting lower. The PG vs. Mature vs. Adult policies is not helping things either.

Its a story worth following further.

Meanwhile, a 3rd party viewer client added an interesting and unexpected feature : jiggling boobs!

Yes, with the independently developed Greenlife Emerald viewer available here, you can now see all the female (and some of the male) avatars jiggle as they dance, walk, and whatever.

Just load the viewer and go to Edit > Preferences > Emerald > Page 2 > Effects > Click “Enable enhanced physics on avatar breasts”. (If it does not work immediately, you may have to restart the viewer)

I wonder how long it will take for this to be added to the official viewer?  I’m guessing a while.

Speaking of Official Viewers they released version 1.23.5 this week to plug a security hole involving notecards. Another 3rd party viewer called Neillife was exploiting this to allow people to copy inventory and remove permissions. Linden Labs caught a bunch of people doing exactly that and banned them.  This made a lot of content creators happy.

Well one person’s ban is another person’s slap on the wrist. The majority of these bans were overturned so fast I suspect a few of the violators didn’t even notice it.

Regardless, it sent a message not to use the exploit, and with the new official viewer the exploit has been plugged.

I just do not know how many people are going to be using the official viewer. What do you want a security hole free client, or one that allows you to look at bouncing boobies?

Finally a note. Second Life’s founder and former CEO is forming a new company. He will still be on the board at LL and will continue to be the public face, but he will only be at LL part time according to his note.  Good luck Phillip, and thanks for all the fish!

Metaverse News boobs, secondlife, sl clients, virtual economy, virtual real estate

I normally don’t do exploring posts so close together, but its been a slow news month, so why not another?

For this one the theme is real life architecture from Europe recreated with care in Second Life. I found three dedicated reproductions both inside and out of famous buildings.

First on the list is the youngest, La Sagrada Familia is a cathederal in Barcelona in real life, but in Second Life it can be found in Meloloona (more pictures).

The ornate details of the original building do not translate to Second Life, but the build is impressive enough to check out. Its quite elaborate even for SL standards.

Next up is an older and smaller mirror build of the Parthenon in Greece. I have stumbled on a few parthenons in Second Life, including one on the official Greece Tourism region. But the one built in Sculptie Experiments (more pictures) is the best I have seen.

The primary reason I favor it is for its use of 3D sculptie prims throughout. This allows a much more detailed and authentic Parthenon build.

Finally, this recreation of Le Mont Saint Michel off the coast of France is one of the most incredible mirror world builds in Second Life. If you have not seen it you really should. They actually recreated the entire island to scale. It can be found in the Mont Saint Michel region (More Pictures).

Like the real place, the hill can be climbed by following a circular path, lined with shops, which is how the rent gets paid.

It is not entirely authentic. Hidden underneath the mountain is a large techno battle zone. See if you can find it.

Virtual Society exploring, France, Greece, mirror worlds, secondlife, Spain

I like doing these themed exploration posts. Most of the time I have two similarly themed regions, then seek out a third to round out the post. Every now and then I find three regions that kind of go together, but not in a simple to explain way. These three are organic, semi fantasy, semi historical, mostly outdoors shopping regions. Couldn’t think of a shorter way to explain it.

In that same spirit, I decided to take on a pseudo fantasy-historical look to tour around these regions.

First up, sounds like a movie plug. Its a place called Where the Wild Things Are like the upcoming Spike Jones movie. The region itself is simply called Pax (More Pictures). As I pop in I find myself in a thunderstorm. This mostly natural outdoors build seems to have its own geology, a forest growing along a recently created lave bed. OK, so that does not happen in real life. Its a pretty build to visit.

Our next stop is a fantasy themed world with a steampunk underworld called 6pi (More Pictures). Not sure what the meaning is (when I tried googling it all I got was 18.8495559…), but it is a nice build anyways. Above is me in front of the main shopping area taking up about a quarter of the region. The simple coloring and elemental plants give it a fairy tale kind of feel, like it is a nice place to hang out. Another half a region is mostly a natural plant build with a small village that sees to have popped up.

The fourth quarter of the build is easy to miss as most of it is buried underwater. It looks a bit steampunk, with its pipes and rusted color, offset with glow effects, some of which are quite nice.

Finally, on this tour is a tropical Pirate themed build called La Cuesta (more pictures). The region consists of a bay, a dock, a shipwreck or two, a cottage, and an inn called the Groll Inn.

After a long days journey visiting three islands, I decided to check myself in.

Virtual Society exploring, fantasy, pirate, secondlife, steampunk

There has been a fair amount of drama on the whole adult continent Zindra front. The move of all adult content to a new continent has brought land speculators, complaints, AR griefing, and other nonsense. Time to take a second look.

On September 15th, Linden Labs has drawn the line. All adult businesses must be on Zindra or an estate server set as “adult”. Rule breakers will no longer be seen in search and could be forced to move.  Furthermore, SL clients not enabled with code to handle adult permissions (1.23 or higher) will no longer be able to see adult islands on maps, or see any shops or groups that are adult in nature.  LL is still vague about their guidelines to prevent people from working around them, though there are 3rd parties figuring it out.

In the June essay, I mentioned two possible scenarios of where Zindra will head: 1.) A sanctuary away from alt griefing and kids pretending to be adult, or 2.) an adult oriented ghetto.  Many of the more established successful businesses have relocated to private estates rather than Zindra. Because of this, its looking more and more likely that the second scenario will prevail.

A quick tour around Zindra today is like a big mall of mostly crap. A good 90% of adult merchants do not know how to make a good store build. Lots of bright tacky colors, or way too big textures that cause load lag. I went to some of the busiest businesses and either found a lot of bots / camping chairs, or builds in private skyboxes.

That to me is a virtual ghetto.

Ironically, after exploring the main areas of Zindra, my favorite build I found was designed to look like a ghetto (More Pictures).  Its actually a group of builds in the same area with the same “ghetto” aesthetic.  Lots of naughty poseball furniture and toys, mixed with sexy clothing shops and booth and apartment rentals.  It is the most interesting build, or group of builds, I found on the whole continent. (Pictures in this article are from that build)

The as yet unanswered question is how will this segregation of adult businesses affect the rest of Second Life.  Adult rated regions currently make up almost 5% of Second Life, and the stricter enforcement (especially on estates) is going to make that percentage rise. Traffic will change, as will land prices, but how and how much are unanswered as of yet.

Below is a map of the main section of Zindra as it now exists. Compare it to the map I made in June and see how much it has changed.

Metaverse News, Virtual Society adult content, censorship, exploring, secondlife, virtual sex, zindra