IMVU, the 3-D avatar chat room company, hits $25M in revenue
IMVU has been fairly quiet about its success in virtual chat rooms, where people can create their own dressed-up 3-D characters and socialize in graphically beautiful settings. But today it’s starting to trumpet loudly that it has established a strong business with a $25 million… Continue Reading
Offerpal Media to help IMVU cash in on its virtual chat rooms
Offerpal Media is going to help IMVU, a 3-D virtual chat room company, cash in on its 35 million registered users as part of a partnership being announced today.
Palo Alto, Calif.-based IMVU lets users create avatars, or virtual characters, and then decorate their rooms with… Continue Reading
IMVU raises $10 million for its virtual rooms business
IMVU, an operator of virtual rooms for teens and young adults, said today it has raised $10 million in a fourth round of funding.
The round was led by Best Buy Capital, and existing investors Menlo Ventures, Allegis Capital, and Bridgescale Partners also participated. The Palo… Continue Reading
South Korea’s Nurien raises $10 million for fashion-oriented virtual world
Nurien Software has been making a splash with its demos of virtual characters dressed as fashion models striding down runways in virtual fashion shows. This strategy has helped the company raise $10 million in a second institutional round of funding.
The funding suggests that investors are… Continue Reading
IMVU to start selling music streams and downloads in its virtual chat rooms
In a sign that the music industry is embracing the digital age, IMVU is announcing today that it will let users discover, share and buy music inside the virtual chat rooms of its 3-D social network.
IMVU lets members create their own 3-D animated virtual characters,… Continue Reading
Austin game event: Lively by Google could be expanded to include games
The Austin Game Developers Conference featured one of the first official public dissections of the Lively by Google virtual world (or virtual room), and I got a chance to sit down with the project’s creative director, Kevin Hanna in advance of that talk.
One of the… Continue Reading
Gaia Online raises $11 million to finance massively multiplayer online game
Gaia Online has raised $11 million in a third round of funding to complete its massively multiplayer online game as a supplement to its “hangout” site for teens and young adults.
Institutional Venture Partners led the round. In the past five years, the San Jose, Calif.,… Continue Reading
Updated: Google unveils its long-awaited virtual world technology
Google is going into the virtual world business today as it unveiled “Lively by Google,” a product that lets users create highly personalized 3-D virtual rooms on the web. Users can create their own custom characters, or avatars, and interact with friends through text chats… Continue Reading
Gaia Online tees up its massively multiplayer online game
Gaia Online has built one of the biggest online hangouts for teens over the past five years. Think of it as an online shopping mall full of kids who express themselves through cartoon-like avatars. Today, it is taking the hangout one step further by revealing… Continue Reading
3-D chat room company IMVU hits 20 million members
Chat room site IMVU has been quiet for four years. But the company is announcing today that it has more than 20 million members in its online community where people can use 3-D avatars, or virtual characters, to meet in rooms and trade virtual goods.
The… Continue Reading
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… Continue Reading