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

A bit of Criticism

[Indras]

My main problem concerning buddy icons and avatars and such is that the selections are simply too limited. I mean, sure, there's a few thousand to pick from, and even categorized, but still finding something that seems to fit me just doesn't happen. I imagine this will be far worse with a 3D avatar based system, since the selection will be much larger, and it just won't be possible for the average person to make their own (like they currently do with animated GIFs and such).

Also, it mentions charging for the service. I personally wouldn't not pay any amount, not even a few pesos a month, for such a service. Instant Messaging is just not something I associate with fees, like web page browsing, or IRC. Besides, if it becomes popular, someone will make a free version of it, or if everyone else thinks it costs too much, it will die a quick death.

It will take some real work to pull this off, but gratz if they do.

Y! Avatars

[Southpaw018]

Does anyone else use Yahoo! Messenger? :p They've had an avatar system for a while now (previous to AIM's SuperBuddy icons), and it's fairly nice if a tad limited in choices. Check out avatars.yahoo.com (ie only, lazy ass yahoo coders). The avatars have multiple facial expressions each, and they react to emoticons used in chat.

Re:Deja Vu???

[bagel2ooo]

>> A webcam pretty much does the same thing - except you don't have avatars, you ARE the avatar.

I think a lot of the desire for these things is to still have that layer of abstraction/anonmnity between you and the people - likely strangers - of who you communicate with online. It can be an intimidating thing to plaster your face in a window with an anonymous party. Also, while this has gotten better, setting up a webcam for IM applications can be fairly non-trivial.