Vivaty Combines Social Networking, Virtual Worlds - Where is it Going?
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Vivaty is so new that the company's first blog posts were in late March. Its first substantial post was in April. In that post Heidi Perry, the company's VP of Marketing, talked about some of the things that Vivaty employees have liked on the web, both in the past and now. "When you mash all of these things - 3D, photos, music, user creativity, user opinions, live communication, and video - we hope to get some magic in what we're building. Send us ideas on what you like, maybe we can throw it into the mix. Stay tuned."
And Vivaty seems to be encouraging input from users. Not only do they want to hear what users think of various scenes, but they're trying to come up with ways "to involve a wider community of creators to participate on the Vivaty platform." Indeed, they'd like to see beta testers create stuff in Vivaty. Whether it will resemble the process of creating something from "prims" as is done in Second Life or some other process remains to be seen; as I mentioned, this company is very new. And of course, from the outside looking in, it's hard to tell what's going on.
On the other hand, this technology has a lot of potential. Imagine a business using it on their web site to give their company a little more personality and to accept feedback from customers. They could create several scenes, attached to their web site or profile on a social site, and have an avatar that interacts with customers. This could also have applications in customer support.
A smaller business could use scenes and avatars to meet with clients who can't be there in person. This could be particularly useful if audio were enabled. As a way to straddle the line between the Internet and the real world, without requiring users to download a large application, Vivaty could carve out an interesting niche for itself.
But it's way too early to tell at this point. And there are plenty of skeptics. Those who posted comments to a New Scientist item on the topic, for example, could see little use for the interface. "Why do people insist on trying to impose 3D over what is fundamentally best presented as a 2D medium?" one wondered. Another felt that Vivaty was missing the attraction of today's social networks. "People are not looking for a face-to-face interaction with other people...[they like] the ease [with] which people can informally leave comments or messages on people's sites." The poster felt that such an informal way of keeping in touch would be lost in a 3D world, though it looks as if Vivaty has allowed for that as well.
Judging from the beta form, Vivaty plans for its service to be highly portable. That would give it a huge advantage over both social networks and virtual worlds. Even with that, however, much will depend on factors such as ease of use and how quickly it catches on. In any case, Vivaty's Scenes might be worth watching.
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