IMVU, a Silicon Valley-based company is revolutionizing the way we socialize and paving the
way towards the future of social media. The days are gone when text messages and video chats
were the only ways to connect with friends and express yourself. Now the time has come to
reform it with augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), providing the ultimate 3D
experience. IMVU is the world’s first and largest avatar-based social network, providing millions
of users with an unprecedented 3D interactive experience on desktop, mobile (iOS/Android), and
tablet devices. It allows its users to connect with people from all over the world to create, chat,
play games, take photos, and share moments.
Transforming the Way we Socialize
It’s no secret that social media platforms are driven by a “create and share” concept fueled by a
user’s desire to create their personal brand. At IMVU, this concept is only the beginning because
creativity is a status symbol, where your identity and your personal brand are there for the
making, without physical, geographical, or financial limitations. We’re in an era of visual
communication, where it’s socially essential to be “with it”. We create & share for (self)
validation. With an online catalog that’s 20+ million items strong, IMVU offers its users
unlimited ways to create, connect, and explore. They can fulfill every fantasy, social whim, and
curiosity, free to be anything from a dancing banana to an impossibly good-looking hipster with
strategically flattering scars. “Content” is shared as photos, outfits, 3D chat rooms, and your own
animated emoji. As the leader in animated emoji technology, IMVU users enjoy infinite
expression in conversation with friends via WithMoji.
A Steadfast Leader
Eric Ries, today an IMVU Board Observer, co-founded IMVU in April 2004 and served as
Chief Technology Officer from its inception till August 2008. A highly sought-after speaker,
Ries is the author of several books, including The Lean Startup, a global best-seller which
documented the innovative developmental methodology widely used in venture-backed and
internal startups worldwide! With over three million unique users every month and
unprecedented mobile growth, the IMVU platform is poised for future growth on all its
platforms.
Converting Challenges into Opportunities
The biggest early challenge that was faced by IMVU, was the difficulty of testing and bringing
their IMVU avatars on a mobile platform. Fans of the immersive 3D avatars and compelling 3D
settings wanted this experience brought in it’s entirety to the constrained mobile platforms. But
unlike other apps which use commonly supported media types (text, images and audio), it was
difficult for IMVU to transfer the features that their desktop users love into mobile, both
extremely important and technically challenging. They had spent more than two difficult years
building technology solutions to deliver their 3D assets to iOS and Android. But when they
finally released their latest feature, 3D chat rooms, users responded and their key metrics
doubled overnight.
Role of Social Media for Leveraging IMVU’s Status
IMVU makes it fun and easy for people to receive validation for their personalized, avatar-based
creativity and expression through social media interactions with friends. Their goal is to take that
content and spread it wider than the IMVU network. For this they use visual platforms like
Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube to share the content that is created within IMVU as well as
to reach new audiences.
External social platforms play a major part in enabling people to show off their unconstrained
creativity and document the amazing breadth of virtual environments they have visited as well as
encouraging new users to come to the platform. In social media, the formula is “showing is
telling” and the concept has proven successful. They motivate their users to continue to create
and share on IMVU by sharing the content with the followers on IMVU’s social media
platforms. What results is a cycle that strengthens the virality of IMVU content outside of the
platform as well as increases the retention of existing users.
Creating Prominent Benchmarks
The number of things vying for consumer attention is at an all-time high. Experiences are to be
brief and instantly engaging, so when it comes to conveying complex concepts quickly, the most
effective means of communication is visual. Elaborating the concept, Morgan Tucker, VP of
Product says:
“ Humans are able to rapidly decipher an incredibly dense amount of information from a
single image. As such, we see the most popular channels of communication trending
away from text and even voice, and towards highly visual mediums – photos, videos and
animations. Advances in mobile technology have empowered an entirely new class of
experiences. Taking advantage of on-board cameras, sensors and raw processing power,
Augmented Reality has allowed the consumer to have greater control over the world
around them – how they see themselves, others and their environment.”
The IMVU app is built upon this concept of offering customers an unprecedented level of
customization on the go. Users can craft and change not only the way they look, but every detail
in the world around them, so that they can easily share their vision with friends. IMVU is
actively bridging the gap between the current generation of AR and VR technology and in turn
pushing mobile communication and interaction to new levels.
