Fresh Look At IMVU, Mini-MMO With Big Numbers
Flying under the proverbial radar for the last four years, the web-based virtual world chatroom IMVU has released new jaw-breaking data: Since April 2004, it has amassed 20 million registered accounts, with 600,000 of those active monthly users. By comparison, Second Life took five years to acquire about 550,000 active users.
The company, well known to web surfers because of its ubiquitous ads, is now earning $1 million a month in revenue, 90 percent of that from the sale of virtual currency and 10 percent from banner ads embedded in its interface, CEO Cary Rosenzweig said. That works out to about $1.66 a month per active user. By VC Jeremy Liew’s estimate, market leaders Habbo Hotel and Club Penguin are earning $1.30 and $1.62 monthly average revenue per user, respectively. How did IMVU grow?
Most of IMVU’s massive catalog of avatar clothing, accessories and other objects available on its online catalog are made by the users themselves. They purchase those items from each other with IMVU credits. (A block of 1000 costs you $1.) IMVU then takes a cut of the profits for each virtual item sale, with the rest going to the individual user.
The result: fresh quality content produced on a regular basis by energized creators. “It’s my personal belief there’s maybe in the order of dozens who are doing this for a living,” Rosenzweig said. “Perhaps hundreds who are doing it for spending money.”
Some more notes:
- About 1.7 million user-generated items have been uploaded to the IMVU catalog
- Users create most content offline with industry-standard modeling tools such as Maya and Blender
- Individual content creators can take their earnings and sell them on third party web sites
- As with Second Life, IMVU users retain intellectual property rights to content submitted to the IMVU catalog
- About 100,000 users are registered to be IMVU content creators, but the number of consistent creators is in the tens of thousands
- IMVU users often sell their credits to other users via third-party web sites — also fine with Cary. “We observe it sort of casually,” he said.
- Demographic: Largest cohort is teens; 60 percent of users are female, 60 percent are American
- 50-70K concurrency is typical, with peaks in the high 70s
- IMVU areas are more like virtual rooms restricted to 10 avatars or fewer; Cary estimated 90 percent of those room interactions are person-to-person, anyway.
While not yet profitable, the company plans to roll out pre-paid IMVU currency cards in Target, Blockbuster and other major retail chains in the next two weeks. With light 3-D graphics and cute-sexy cartoon avatars that appeal to girls and young women, it’s easy to see IMVU dominating its particular niche in the virtual world ecosystem, roughly dead center between Second Life and Barbie Girls.
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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Hey: Reference There.com numbers too, since IMVU is a direct descendant of There.com.
“Look out SL” my eye. 550,000 <1.5 million actives. 14 million totals for second life.
DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH THIS COMPANY!
DO NOT GIVE THEM MONEY!
I was a customer. I had unaddressed customer service issues that were ongoing for 5 months…with absolutely no response despite my repeated appeals.
They responded when I began to publicly complain to other members…by banning me and seizing over $1000 worth of products and credits.
If you have any complaints about how the site is managed….they will deal with you very harshly. If you don’t believe me, sign up and look for johnnybebadd.
There are thousands of horror stories about this company. Members are trying to get class action lawsuits in both the US and Australia. They are NOT accredited with the San Jose, CA Better Business Bureau.
The community of users is great…but you will regret it if you have to deal with customer service. Save yourself some money and heartache and just go over to second life. That is where most IMVU users end up once they have been burned.
johnnybebadd is not available looks like it has been banned :(
do you know how to even contact these jerks? my account was hacked so now i can’t even get in there to shut off my account. When i send a ticket i get an email saying they don’t do direct email customer service anymore and the provided link sends me back to send another ticket.
Please don’t do business with this company. You will regret it. I had over $1000 in merchandise and credits seized by IMVU because I publicly complained that customer service had ignored me…and my request for help for 5 months.
If you say anything negative about them publicly, they will go after you.
Right now, thousands of users in the US and Australia are trying to get class action lawsuits filed against them.
IMVU is not friendly to their customers….and they will ban you too and take everything you have paid into the company if they decide they don’t like you.
They are not accredited with the Better Business Bureau.
… and IMVU has 20 million registered users, but that’s not the most meaningful figure, active monthly use is. That’s 550K for SL, a reported 600K for IMVU. 60 day active for SL is actually about 1.15 million now I believe.
“Right now, thousands of users in the US and Australia are trying to get class action lawsuits filed against them.”
thousands of noobs surely? anyone who uses second life or IMVU (makes me sick just to type it blergh) is insane and needs a good pointed stick to the soul for even going near that level of utter-lame.
just my two pence ;)
“Right now, thousands of users in the US and Australia are trying to get class action lawsuits filed against them.”
This is why AlZuben and jazmynx had to post almost exactly the same story twice in the matter of minutes.
Go outside and live in the real world…
Wow, nice graphics! hey now!!!
JT
http://www.FireMe.To/udi
After 2 years with this company, the last of which had been spent banging my head against the uncompromising wall they like to (laughably) refer to as “customer support”, I have to ugre potential members to steer clear of this company.
Our community of users has banded together to bring to light the actions, policies, and illegal (as defined in the U.S. Federal Trade Commission website: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/guides/baitads-gd.htm — see below) practices they have been accused of.
[b]Sec. 238.2 Initial offer.[/b]
(a) No statement or illustration should be used in any advertisement which creates a false impression of the grade, quality, make, value, currency of model, size, color, usability, or origin of the product offered, or which may otherwise misrepresent the product in such a manner that later, on disclosure of the true facts, the purchaser may be switched from the advertised product to another.
(b) Even though the true facts are subsequently made known to the buyer, the law is violated if the first contact or interview is secured by deception. [Guide 2][/list]
Numerous attempts have been made to coerse the representatives of this agency to seperate minors from predators, have the company return purchases made which they later took from a huge percentage of their Adult Pass members, and have the Adult Pass re-instated to its originally marketed status (it had been down-graded, suddenly and without owner consent). IMVU does not allow for open discussion and/or inquiry of unwarranted/unpopular practices in their forums. Censorship is not only practiced in their adult-only forums, it extends to include unpopular and well-mannered/professionally-addressed statements.
Arguements can be made both for and against IMVU, however, whatever the case, I would suggest educating yourself to the realities of the site before making any monetary investment. I once spoke extremely high of this social site. Now, I am ashamed for having enlisted so many into its web.
You can find a third-party discussion, initiated by a member of the Alberta Police Department, at the ConnectSafely blog, here: http://www.blogsafety.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1100000166&start=0
Finally, You may like to visit the CCI at http://cci.freeforums.org, for discussion and behind-the-scenes view at the attrocities this company has been accused of.
Visit the above links, if so motivated, get a free membership with IMVU and wander within its forums to take in a real glimpse of their practices. If you do happen to go that far, ask yourself, “Where are the really hard-hitting discussions about customer service. Doesn’t anybody have a complaint that they want addressed?” If you happen to see nothing of the sort, see if you find evidence of the users kissing up to the IMVU representatives, and ask yourself, “Why are the customers kissing up to them?” The answer is simple; moderators answer to one staff member. That staff member chooses IMVUs moderators, and decides what topics are deemed “unpopular”. Those making waves are banned from forum use as well as sending/receiving private messages. As the rules have been proven to be (see linked URLs) imposed only sporadically and unjustly, people fear banishment from the forums and/or the revolkation of their IMVU accounts.
But don’t take our word for it. You’re best off just doing a bit of homework before entering into business with them.
Don’t say you weren’t warned, though.
~Zyzzx
anyone got back her/his acct by filing lawsuit?
gee, IMVU sounds kinda scary–but it is only 2.5D! 3D immersive world has it’s own issues as well. Still seems like we are in the post-hype cycle with SL. We ran some of the recent data and have some comments here http://rezzable.com/blog/rightasrain-rimbaud/looking-linden-sl-data-and-trying-be-excited-about-sl5b
We still think SL is best 3D immersive web platform…but it is not a vibrant, growing world atm. It is a mixed message, because LL is apparently making lots of cash profit, but not investing in new user marketing. Is it because of technology issues? We don’t see the service as so bad really and neither do the new island purchasers. But it would suggest that LL having 60k concurrency has more than it can handle loading the system.
So then obvious question is…why not charge the users? Is it because such a high proportion of log-ons are campers (wtf is a camper read here http://www.squidoo.com/slcampingguide ) or bots and any effort to charge people will strip that out immediately.