IMVU Is Instant Messaging

For most of the millions of people around the world who regularly use instant messaging, the communications tool has largely been a text-only experience in which typed emoticons offer only minimal clues to someone's state of mind.

The recent launch of two services -- a brand new, fully three-dimensional chat-room product known as IMVU, and AOL Instant Messenger's new 3-D SuperBuddy icons -- is putting the spotlight on a major shift by the leading IM providers toward making graphical avatars a fundamental personalization feature.

IMVU is the new service from Will Harvey, founder of There. Harvey is riffing on some of the core communications features he developed for There's metaverse and devoting them to instant messaging. In IMVU , people talk to each other in 3-D chat rooms using avatars that display a wide range of emotional cues and do so through a client that is compatible with the leading IM applications.

"IMVU gives you the sense that you are in the presence of the person you are chatting with," said Harvey. "What I think we understand better than anyone else is that the killer app is something that lets people feel like they are with the person they are chatting with."

People seem to see something in IMVU -- Harvey said the service is getting 1,000 new users per day.

AIM's 3-D SuperBuddy icons appear alongside the service's traditional chat boxes and display emotional cues in response to commands typed by the service's users. AOL subscribers have used SuperBuddies since mid-2003, but their release in AIM follows a trend of graphical avatar-based instant messaging started by Yahoo and ICQ.

"It's really an extension to the conversation," said Drew Weaver, AOL's director of marketing for expressions and greetings. "It really adds a layer of fun and interactivity to the conversation without getting in the way of the actual conversation itself."

According to a study by comScore MediaMetrix, more than 250 million people use instant messaging regularly. And IDC estimates that more than 7 billion instant messages are sent every day. According to AOL senior director of corporate communications Krista Thomas, AIM's users are known to spend six hours a day on average with their IM client open.

And now, each company hopes, adding avatars to the mix will only increase the amount of time and commitment users have to instant messaging.

Some, however, aren't so sure they're on the right track.

"Avatar-based IM is a curiosity right now," said Jeff Hester, who runs the instant-messaging watchdog site, BigBlueBall.com. "It's cute, but I don't think many people have embraced it as something they couldn't live without. It feels a little like a solution in search of a problem."

Part of the problem is that the avatars that have been available for a while have been limited as to what kind of information they can convey, Hester acknowledged. The new releases may hold more promise.

"As the ability to express emotions becomes more fluid with avatar-based systems, that could change," he said. "Right now emotions are the most difficult thing to convey. Many times people get mixed messages, or misinterpret what someone says because there is no body language to go with it."

Genelle Hung, a market analyst at the Radicati Group, said that while she sees some benefits to avatar-based IM, she's not sure it is going to be the big hit the IM services want it to be.

"I think it's kind of short-lived," Hung said. "I think it's one of those faddish things that people are going to want to have for a while." Instead, she said, services like IMVU are likely to appeal to niche audiences rather than the widespread mass market that Harvey is hoping for.