Meebo, Google and IMVU fastest growing instant messenging services
Meebo, an instant messaging service, has grown 354 percent between now and ten months ago, according to Nielsen (pdf). Perhaps this is no surprise, considering the range of viral products it has been releasing, such as its embeddable chat rooms.
Other Silicon Valley tech companies also have fast-growing services. One is Google’s GTalk, at 149 percent, which integrates IM with Gmail. The other is IMVU.
IMVU is more similar to virtual worlds like Habbo Hotel or Second Life. It lets you create a cartoon avatar for your IM conversations, featuring virtual clothes and other goods — some of which are very revealing.
You start out with a free set of clothes and some furniture, then buy your way up. Then, you get to chat with your friends in what the company describes as “killer 3D scenes.” It requires a software download to run, and registration.
Someone has posted a YouTube video here, however, that depicts how IMVU users customize their clothes and their rooms. It also reflects how the company uses sexy-looking avatars to make itself more attractive to its teenage audience — so much so that this video was tagged by YouTube users as being too racy for those under 18.
Judging from some home-made clips also available on YouTube, users are taking their experiences on the site pretty seriously. That’s another good sign for the company.
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About the Author, Eric Eldon
Eric currently covers digital media technology and business news, especially what's happening on social networks and their platforms. He also writes and edits stories about venture capital, and lots of other stuff, too. He started at VentureBeat in the spring of 2007, half a year or so after Matt Marshall left his reporting job at the San Jose Mercury News to found the site. Eric previously cofounded a startup called Writewith, that was building editorial software for newspapers and other groups of writers. The startup didn't work out, but he learned a lot.
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