Instant Messaging Goes Graphical

williampiv writes "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."

Comments

MS Chat?

[softwave]

I thought Microsoft had a similar product a couple of years ago. Microsoft Chat or Comic Chat or something in the kind... You could select a comic character and assign it facial expressions and such.
It died a silent death :)

Re:MS Chat?

[TheRaven64]

MS Comic Chat was an IRC client that spammed the channel with some meta-data used to create the comic. I used it a few times, and found that most of the time I never bothered to change my character's emotional state, and neither did anyone else.

Re:MS Chat?

[Anonymous Coward]

It died a silent death :)

Untrue! CCHAT.EXE lives on!

Re:MS Chat?

[scambaiter]

actually ms comic chat was a crappy graphical irc client that tried to build some kind of comic strip from the stuff happening in the channel. since it was the 90s, age of the non-standard extensions (yes, i mean you, mr. blink tag), ms comic chat sent special lines that would be interpreted by other clients so it could create matching images. for some funny reasons there are still people around who use this client; whenever you see some guy entering a channel and sending a line like "scambaiter appears as CowboyNeal" you just met one of those;)

Re:MS Chat?

[Red Alastor]

In fact, it was killed by Microsoft itself. It wasn't tolerated on almost all servers (because of the spammy meta-data) and Microsoft closed their own.

Re:Been There

[pHatidic]

I was about to make the same joke, but let me instead add this. Back in 6th grade I used to play the Star Wars Collectable Card Game a bit and they had a weekly chat in an environment with custom star wars themed backgrounds where each person chose an avatar. Or at least that's what I heard because it was a 24 meg download and I could never get it to actually work back in the day. So this technology is at least 9 years old, probably even older than that.

Nothing new here. :)

[Gwala]

If I may point out, this isnt anything new. Blaxxun, Activeworlds, Secondlife are all similar 3D platforms, but have a great deal more experience & interactivity (having all existed for some years now). I posted some info on my favourite 3D platform at the moment (Secondlife) here

(Also check out Activeworlds & There (nb: there is more a social use, like the topic, rather than a 3D platform on it's own.))

habbo hotel

[GMail Troll]

Something similar has been around for a while in the form of Habbo Hotel, where you can wander around a virtual hotel in shockwave and interact with other people.

gmail invite

ActiveWorlds

[bjb]

There has been a service, ActiveWorlds for years now.. I think it opened in 1996? Basically, it is a fully 3D environment that you would walk around in, interact with other people, build houses, etc.

I haven't logged on to it in years (read: since maybe 1999), but I always remember that I thought it was pretty cool given the 3D capabilities of x86 machines at the time (read: none), and it wasn't TOO bad for dialup. Even played MIDI tracks while you were walking around. I think they eventually went to a pay-for-service model, and hopefully they eventually adopted some kind of 3D acceleration technology (via ActiveX?)

It'll never work.

[Nurgled]

This won't catch on, because people generally use IM while doing something else. I can type a message and then read some email (or type a message to someone else) while waiting for a response. When the other person does respond, the window icon blinks or jumps around or whatever is usual in your chosen environment to get your attention.

These 3D environments (I've tried a few of them) generally require more attention, since firstly there are generally lots more people involved in conversation, and your "relationship" with other people in the space is a lot more hazey, based on where everyone is in the environment rather than just who they have chosen to talk to today. Also, many of them don't have an easily-usable scrollback buffer, so you can get lost in the conversation if you look away for a few minutes.

IM will always be text-based just because it's more efficient that way. Systems like Second Life and There have their place, but it's not as a replacement for IM. (Side note: There actually has IM integrated into it, and surprise, surprise... it's text-based!)

Palace

[remikun]

I thought there was already a similar software doing the same thing a few years ago... I think it was called The Palace. Probably someone already mentioned that.

Re:Been There

[kubrick]

Correction; here's a better copy of that paper without all the words run together.

I was actually in 7th grade in 1986, not 6th, but who's counting? :)

IMVU

[eries]

Hey, I'm one of the engineers at IMVU. I thought many of the coolets things about IMVU weren't even mentioned in the article, and figured I'd post a link. Please feel free to post your comments. Oh, and if you're interested in joining one of our many free software projects, drop me a line.

For those of you too lazy to click here is some text from our About Us page:

Our philosophy

* Censorship-free micropayment economy - We're creating a marketplace for digital goods that (as one of our customers put it) is "for the people, by the people." We have worked hard to prevent the IMVU experience from ever being overtaken by our opinions, preferring to leave it up to our customers to decide what they want to create and do with IMVU.

* Open platform - We know that good ideas come from all over, not just from our office. So we're committed to creating every opportunity to open up our platform to new kinds of creativity. Let us know if you've got a good idea.

* Eat our own dogfood - We've set up our business so that if our developers don't succeed, we don't succeed. We like it that way, because it prevents any distinction between our developers' interests and our own. Developers use the exact same tools we do to create content for IMVU, and can sell in our economy just as well as we can.

* Release early, release often - We are committed to fast fixes and rapid iteration, and strive to incorporate as much feedback as humanly possible. We think the fastest way to grow a successful product is to release the product as early as possible and to improve it over time in collaboration with our customers. We appreciate everyone's patience, and believe that we will all share in the reward of seeing IMVU's exciting and rapid evolution.

* Free and open-source software - IMVU would not be possible without the countless contributors around the world that have developed, tested, and maintained the many open source and free software projects we use. We strive to use free and open-source alternatives whenever they are available, and actively engage with communities that produce the software we use. We are contributors to many projects, and have even started a few of our own.