"I vividly recall my first time sitting on a virtual sofa interacting with another avatar. Compared to real life, an avatar allows a greater ability to optimize how you present yourself in a social setting, which often makes an avatar a better communicator than you in the real world. Through gestures, movement, and interactions with others, IMVU avatars create a greater sensation of social presence - the feeling of being with someone else in a digital environment. On IMVU, your avatar, customized to your preferences, represents you. People love to interact with others in digital spaces, according to virtual reality and digital human expert Jeremy Bailenson, founder of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford University. At IMVU, we are spreading the power of friendships through our product's experience to address the rising rates of loneliness in all generations." As CEO Daren Tsui explains, "Virtual worlds will be the next generation social platform connecting people in a way that exceeds both face-to-face connection and the curated feeds of Facebook and Instagram. That social aspect of the online experience is exactly the focus of IMVU. IMVU envisions a world of deepening friendships through highly connective virtual shared experiences. Instead of posting past each other on Facebook or Instagram, IMVU user interactions are hyperpersonal - the experience is similar to the fidelity of face-to-face interaction, but at a heightened level, which enables users to find a meaningful connection like in the real world. Recent studies have shown that loneliness is on the rise and the lack of strong social connection is now considered a determinant of overall health and wellness. The strengthened executive team will help accelerate product innovation, support continued mobile growth, and continue to build the world's largest avatar-based social network. It has over the years made a handful of minority investments in companies outside China, though it’s not nearly as aggressive as Tencent in terms of investment pace and volume.Ī NetEase spokesperson declined to comment on the investment in IMVU.REDWOOD CITY, Calif., May 9, 2018 /PRNewswire/ - IMVU, the leading avatar-based social network today announces that it expanded its executive team by hiring Daren Tsui as the chief executive officer (CEO), Lauren Bigelow as the chief product officer, Victor Zaud as the senior vice president of marketing, John Burris as the chief development officer, and Lomit Patel as the vice president of growth. ![]() ![]() It is a natural fit for us to become partners,” he added.įounded in 2005, NetEase is now known for its news portal, music streaming app, education products and video games that compete with those of Tencent. We have many shared business philosophies and complementary know-how. “IMVU operates one of the world’s oldest, yet most vibrant and young - in terms of our user base - metaverses. “NetEase operates some of the most successful, biggest in scale, and evergreen MMO games in China and they see in IMVU business highlights echoing theirs,” Daren Tsui, chief executive officer at Together Labs, told TechCrunch. A new parent organization called Together Labs was formed to oversee its flagship platform IMVU, in which users can create virtual rooms and chat with strangers using custom avatars, a product that’s today considered by some a dating platform a new service called Vcoin, which lets users buy, gift, earn and convert a digital asset from the IMVU platform into fiat and other virtual services. The fresh investment will be used to fund IMVU’s product development and comes fresh off a restructuring at the company. ![]() The company declined to disclose its post-money valuation. IMVU has raised more than $77 million from five rounds since it was co-founded by “The Lean Startup” author Eric Ries back in 2004. Menlo Park-based Structural Capital among other institutions that also joined in the strategic round totaling $35 million. NetEase, the second-largest gaming company in China (behind Tencent), is among a group of investors who just backed IMVU, an avatar-focused social network operating out of California. ![]() The line between social networking and gaming is increasingly blurring, and internet incumbents are taking notice.
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