Meez — port your virtual self

April 4, 2006 | Matt Marshall

We thought this item about Meez was April Fool’s joke when we first saw it on Om Malik’s site, but turns out it is not.

Here is a Forbes story about Meez, which is yet another site that lets you play around with customized avatars so that you can escape your real world and dabble in fantasy. It was launched by Sean Ryan, who previously ran the music site, Rhapsody. It is like IMVU, another company that lets you customize your avatar and go off and chat with people in virtual bars and coffeehouses. But Meez wants to let you take your avatar wherever you go, including eventually on cell-phones. It is owned by Donnerwood Media, of San Francisco, which has received $4.3 million in venture funding from Battery Ventures, Transcosmos Partners, Allen & Co. and other individual investors.

Here is the company’s press release.

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About the Author, Matt Marshall

Matt launched VentureBeat in September of 2006, with the realization that no one else was covering the entrepreneurial and tech innovation scene with the velocity or depth that he was. Prior to founding VentureBeat, he covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. In 2002, Matt was awarded "Journalist of the Year" by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to working at the Merc, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 to 1998, and a writer for the Washington Post in 1994. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to VentureBeat, Matt is also the Executive Producer of DEMO, the leading launchpad event for emerging technologies.