09-18-2005 11:00
From: Oz Spade
Ehhh, when so little is offered Free, I disqualify the word.
That's a very good point, although I'd argue that Second Life is marketed much in the same way.

From: someone
Very good interview with Will. The confusing thing about IMVU though, is that he says its not a virtual world, yet many of the aspects of IMVU, such as economy, come for a virtual world, little if ANY other IM Add-Ons have an economy system. I also find most of the avatar models ugly, big heads and little bodys remind me of sick etheopian(sp) children, or aliens. However the avatar technology is of course great, I believe most of the ideas come from what they did at There, so it's really just a continuation of that feature.
Glad you enjoyed the interview. I agree that IMVU has some identity issues--it's certainly world-like in its presentation. And it's not presented in a style that everyone will like. I'm not crazy about the avatar design, but I believe users can design their own meshes. The animations are certainly more fluid than SL.

From: someone
As for a question, if you'd be willing to ask him, since IMVU makes such use of Open Source tech, would IMVU ever go full open source? Or what parts of it would they open? Also he said they had already made contributions, where? And What?
Thanks for the suggestion. I was hoping he'd offer some of those specifics in the initial interview, but he seemed to be playing it a little close to the vest. I'll try and work in those questions for the next round.

With regards to some of the other information I've learned in this thread, I was planning to discuss the user creation and economy with Will next round, so it's good to know some of the background issues beforehand. Learning that IMVU has been breaking user creations with new versions of the software is useful (thanks, Veritas for the tip).
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Zero Grace, agent of Tony Walsh
Read Tony's Second Life weblog entries at Clickable Culture