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 annual revenue run rate.
Cary Rosenzweig, chief executive and president of the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company, said in an interview the company has doubled its revenue in the past year in… 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 virtual objects. Some people pay real money for those objects. But there are others who might be more active if they could earn currency in some other way.
Enter Offerpal, which… 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 Alto, Calif.-based company also said that its base of registered users has grown to 30 million, compared to 20 million in June.
Members create their own virtual characters, or avatars, and… 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 still excited about virtual worlds. According to market researcher In-stat, virtual worlds are expected to hit 1 billion registered users and $3 billion in revenues by 2012. And since Nurien… 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, or avatars, and decorate rooms that serve as 3-D chat rooms. Now the members can use IMVU Music to buy songs, create playlists, and listen them alongside other IMVU avatars…. 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 news tidbits: Lively could be expanded into the casual game space as Google plans to release guidelines for more interactive components, meaning games, inside Lively spaces.
“We’re about to open up… 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., company has built one of the largest worlds where teens can talk to each other via animated characters, or avatars, in a kind of virtual shopping mall. The company has… 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 or animations.
The long-awaited move has been expected by rivals such as IMVU, Habbo, WeeWorld, and Gaia Online – all of whom offer virtual rooms and avatars targeted at young people…. 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 the details of a more elaborate, connected virtual world with its own storyline and missions.
The company’s Gaia Online site already generates 3 billion monthly page views and has more than… 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 Palo Alto, Calif.-based company also says it has the world’s largest catalog of virtual goods for sale, with over 1.5 million 3-D items. Chief executive Cary Rosenzweig (pictured below) says… 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 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… Continue Reading