VentureBeat has launched it’s own Vivaty 3-D Virtual Scene. Vivaty embeds in web pages, making it a better choice for companies wary of building environments in SecondLife, which requires a large client download that needs to be frequently updated and it’s steep learning curve. By using Vivity’s tools to splice together a virtual scene, you can create a 3-D experience and embed it on any blog, site, brand or online destination. Vivaty is Windows only for now, so I haven’t used it yet. Google’s Lively and IMVU are competitors.
Earlier this year, Ravit Ableman took me on a virtual date at Omidate, which serves as a bridge between profile reading and meeting in person. I liked how questions are asked of both participants, breaking the ice in a way that’s just so much more natural than riffing off of a profile. I see tremendous potential for advertising revenue at Omnidate, but only if they can land a few larger dating sites as clients. They need to go after 3-5 top 20 sites, which can take up to a year to get a deal moving, while integrating with smaller sites along the way, even if Omnidate has to do all of the programming themselves at a loss.
Omnidate has lost almost a third of it’s visitors since July. It’s pretty clear that it’s is going to have to give up being a destination, instead relying on being as easily embeddable as Lively, Vivaty or IMVU.
In the dating space, I remain on the fence about singles warming up to avatar-based first dates. The current crop of environments is either too restrictive or anything goes, we’re still waiting for someone to come up with the killer combination of directed first contact, contextually-relevant experiences, expressive avatars and partnerships and advertisers.
Finally, I love the idea of being able to hop from one virtual environment to another. Several companies are building the underlying technology to make this happen. In the meantime, we’re stuck with all of these walled-garden approaches. We need Facebook Connect or something like that for virtual space.
