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Interview with Connie Sec - Second Life, Blue Mars and more

2010-03-31T01:38:00.000-07:00

Today we bring you an interview with noted 3d fashionista, Connie Sec.

Connie's virtual photography and art are well known on Second Life and throughout the wider metaverse, so I'm happy she took the time out of her schedule. In this interview she shares her thoughts on virtual art, Second Life, Blue Mars and hot industry topics...

Connie Sec

Q - So tell us a little about yourself and your virtual world interests

I began in Second Life (SL) in April 07, expecting some sort of 3D web experience. Before that, I had no experience in 3d worlds, not played any MMO’s such as Warcraft and not used I.M. So I was a total “Noob”. Being in my 1st year at university gave me the time to learn and I realised that I could do things in SL that were fairly impossible for me to achieve in “Real Life” (RL). I found an increasing interest in virtual photography and art that had lain dormant since my school days. As my RL career is in Science, SL provides a welcome break from that side.

I have fun with fashion, but also enjoy the chance to express myself with humor, pathos and the occasional airing of my various neuroses ☺. As time went by, I really did have a second life, fairly separate from my RL. Aside from the social aspects, I love to build a little, and have a sim that I rent prims to some close friends to help pay tier. I have full control over the direction and style of the sim and have basically built my “Dream” home and lived a “Dream” life. Any opinions I have regarding SL or other virtual worlds are colored by my interests, and so, what may be important to me may not be an issue to many others.

Q - You're well known for your stunning fashion shots. Take us through your process, how does the magic happen?

The process can be different depending upon what the fashion shot is for.

If it’s a shot for a designer, who wants to perhaps use it in their blog or store, this places emphasis upon being able to see their creation. I will either have scouted a location already, or I will build a “set” at my studio or perhaps simply use a RL pic as a texture on a prim in the background. I will then go through hair, shoes and accessories that I feel compliment what I am trying to achieve. I then go through my poses, looking for something that works in the shot. I think I have around 300 useful poses in my 2 pose stands and a few more in my inventory for activation in Sims that don’t allow me to rezz anything. Once I have the general shot worked out I then log into Shadowdraft viewer for actual pic taking. This provides further challenges and need for some tweaking. For example, that viewer handles transparencies a little differently to the “normal” viewer, so it usually requires that I mod transparencies on prims and sculpts to that they look as they would in the normal viewer. As the Shadow viewer is a private project by Kirsten that has its own glitches and frustrations, there are other things I may have to do, that I won’t go into, to achieve anything usable.

Connie's homage to Dior and Galliano collections

I then work on the environmental controls. As that viewer can throw real time shadows in response to sun position, I use it to match lighting direction that may be apparent in any RL background I may use, or even throw shadow onto the background. Approximately half the time to completion is taken actually getting the shot with colour, light direction looking realistic. I may even take 2 shots of the same scene with different lighting directions to later meld together in post to simulate 2 light sources.

Post work is firstly perhaps cropping the pic and melding of shots together. I use an old program called Photodraw 2000 to do the simple things that newer programs make overly complex. I then go onto fixing avatar glitches that may be apparent. I mainly use the brush and Iwarp tool in Gimp. I then turn to Mystical tone and colour using a brush tool to increase apparent resolution and sharpness within parts of the image. I find the max resolution of 1024 x 1024 applied to textures in SL a major drawback to getting detail into images, especially as my pics in a square aspect ratio are at 3000 x 3000. I may apply other post effects such as gradient tinting. This all depends upon if I judge a pic would benefit from other post work. I feel post should enhance what I already have rather than be a distraction or a way to cover up a bad shot. That is a very short description of some of what I may do to get a shot, more detail would require 2 A4 pages of text in Word ☺ On the whole I am very lucky to have designers that allow me free reign to try new ways of doing things. That is the way I feel I have improved.

Q - SL is your main home, what do think of the new capabilities in the Version 2 viewer?

New Second Life Beta Viewer 2

I’m not a fan of the Beta U.I 2.0. While the aim of making SL easier to come to grips with is laudable, in my opinion, they have failed. Most people I speak to, feel it is even more confusing than the old UI and I agree with them. On a more philosophical note, SL is NOT a web page, and the idea of making the UI more browser like is flawed because of this. Some love to say Virtual worlds are the future of the Web and the UI for Viewer 2.0 is an illogical extension of that thinking. SL is more akin to a game than web pages (in functionality) and virtual worlds will be a subset of the web, not usurp it. SL is much like your computer, it does many jobs, from chatting in IM to pulling up a program to do something disparate. The SL UI should take its cue from operating system interface conventions rather than Firefox.

While the new features such as an extra layer/ face tattoo and web on a prim is some enhancement and is welcome, I feel it is tinkering at the edges and does very little to drive SL in a direction that virtual worlds will inevitably have to go, and that is greater graphical fidelity. SL will have to break a lot of eggs (content) to move on, such as, improving the avatar mesh, make the AV UV map better and have a more powerful graphical engine to return greater fidelity to the user. The longer they put that off, perhaps, licensing the unreal engine or Cryengine 2, the more pain they will cause the user base and the more chance there will be for someone else to move ahead.

Q - You're a user of open source viewers for SL, which is your favorite and why?

Emerald Viewer

For everyday use, I use the Emerald viewer - it offers greater options than the LL viewer. Some of these include, double the attachment points, a worn tab in Inventory, quicker access to commonly used controls, built in radar, avatar identification and sorting of that information. This is not a complete list of functions that Emerald offers beyond that of the “Official” viewer. It also seems more stable than the official viewer. However I may be wrong as I have not downloaded the official viewer for a year or so now.

For photographic work, I use various versions of the Kirstens “Shadowdraft “ viewer

Non fashion virtual photography by Connie Sec

I've used a shadow viewer in some form for almost every pic since Jan 09. To me they give better results than the traditional viewer. All lights cast a shadow and to me, use of local lighting with no shadows cast by them, even if subtly, is unrealistic and cartoon like. Some try to simulate this in post with a shadow on the wall or floor, however they forget that hair too will cast onto the face, or the nose, depending on light direction, will cast onto your cheek.

Q - Probably the most ambitious high fidelity world to come along recently is Blue Mars. Tell us about your activities and thoughts there?

Blue Mars photography by Connie Sec

I signed up for a developer account in July 09 with the aim of making shapes and skins. Avatar Reality has just released the body/ skin importer. Unfortunately the shape editor is severely crippled, in my view, with the inability to do anything meaningful as far as improving the stock BM AV. Right now in BM you cannot make changes to the AV mesh without severely deforming the animations. They promise improvements are coming. The skin UV templates have been kindly provided by an outside developer. Of course they match no other template in any other program, be it Poser, Daz or even SL. There are opensource programs such as Makehuman, and UV mapping schemes that would make it simpler to create an Avatar. Why must people constantly reinvent the wheel?

My problem now is time. I have a full time job after graduating and have a SL to lead as well, so my time is so constrained that my work on those templates is sporadic. While I congratulate Avatar Reality for attempting to bring a higher fidelity Virtual World into existence, the learning curve in BM for developers / Content creators is so steep that it makes learning to create for SL look like child’s play. This may be its downfall. I will go out on a limb and say it will take BM till the end of the year to get their DEV tools up to a point where Avatar customisation is as wide ranging as SL. A corollary of this is that they cannot go out of beta until the tools are better understood and the bugs and limitations are addressed.

Already there are those that pop in from SL into BM and write it off because of lack of functionality and laugh at the use of chat bubbles (oh so late 80’s), without understanding that it is still in Beta.

Q - Some industry folks are making the argument that virtual worlds are being supplanted or subsumed by casual gaming such as in Facebook with applications like Yoville? What do you think?

Comparing Virtual Worlds to Facebook type-sites is like comparing Twitter to Blogs. While they have similarities, blogs supply a “richer” experience than Twitter. So too virtual worlds provide a “richer” experience than social networking. SL for example has a “social networking” element, however it provides more than any social networking site. To be metaphysical about it, virtual worlds like SL allow you to build your dreams and share them with likeminded souls. Facebook and twitter allow you to share that you like leftover pizza in the morning ☺

Youville?..cute..I would probably play if I was 8 years old. ☺

Q - What's your personal opinion on browser based 3d virtual worlds?

Browser based virtual worlds can be a good starting point for those new to Virtual Worlds.

An example of a in-browser 3d world

It will also constrict, at the moment, what you can achieve as far as graphical power and fidelity is concerned. However, if cloud computing takes off, the game will change where anything can be served up into a “browser”. If someone, in my demographic, is using a browser in, perhaps, a mobile device and wants to play a virtual world and has the choice between a cartoon and photorealism, I feel they will choose photorealism. I point to games as an example. With this in mind, I feel the idea of SL using a browser like interface is a retrograde step in this regard. Why have a browser within a browser?

To expand, there will always be a niche for simple virtual worlds. All media is now fragmented into niches, and virtual worlds are not immune. People now gravitate to where their ideas and prejudices are shared, be it the news service they watch, the blog they read or the communities they join within a virtual world. Virtual worlds have to either target a certain niche, or be expansive, and open minded enough, to be able to host disparate communities. In the end it will be “bums on seats” that will determine if a virtual world survives.

Q - Finally, with all that you do online, how do you juggle the hours in your day?

I sleep grudgingly ☺.

To be serious, I had a lot more time for SL and even BM when I was a student, however, now with a full time job, I have to organise my 2 lives much more. Sometimes all I do is log in, shop, perhaps take a commission from a designer and take pics and log off to do post work. My social life in SL has definitely gone on the backburner, which is a sadness for me. My social life in SL has always been a strong influence upon my photography. So too other peoples work, whether it be photos in flickr, C.G. from Poser and others, fashion sites, photography and art. Finding the time to be inspired, learn and to create is certainly difficult.

Thanks for taking the time Connie!

Thoughts on There.com closing

2010-03-03T05:05:00.000-08:00

The same week Linden Labs unveiled a huge improvement to their Second Life service, another service, There.com announced its shutdown, a very sad day for all.

ArianeBrodie in MTV Laguna Central

Lots of differing views on virtual worlds in the blogosphere at the moment. Raph is down on virtual worlds as a whole, Hamlet Au takes a more positive stance.

My take? The whole argument that virtual worlds are doomed, is I think invalid.

Virtual world features and attributes are being more widely adopted than ever, both in pure social environments as well as gameplay worlds.

At the end of the day, it's fun and will always be fun to escape into a fantasy environment where you can roleplay, party, hangout, be creative, meet new people and do whatever you want.

That won't change, and bodes well for virtual environments, especially as the 3d hardware continues to spread throughout the user population

However, several things have changed in the years since There.com was first developed. Expectations are higher:

1/ people want to jump in the action straight away from anywhere, barriers need to be low
2/ they expect their 3d games now to look great
3/ people are spending more time in facebook and in the browser (and so, less time out of them)
4/ people want to see diversity, new things, a sense of aliveness (the "stream" of new content)

Looking at it through this lens, There.com struggling is understandable:

1/ a large download, then learning many functions takes patience(!) (which users now don't have)
2/ avatars looked dated compared with other platforms like IMVU that continued to innovate
3/ can't tap into where people are ie- on facebook and in browser (fundamental limitation of clients)
4/ UGC works best when there are less limits, just look at the amazing catalog in Second Life

Personally, I think the future belongs to those 3d games and worlds platforms that can get new users into the action in seconds, be exposed to diversity and give them the desire to engage more (and spend money!)

Everyone needs to lift their game (our own world included), and that's a great thing for users and the industry as a whole...

Thoughts on Metaplace - One world shuts, another opens up...

2010-01-11T06:07:00.000-08:00

I have to admit, it was a shock to me to hear the news of web world Metaplace.com closing.

Browser based avatar world, Metaplace

Whilst I didn't spend too much time there personally Metaplace always struck me as a pioneering service, in many ways well ahead of its time.

On paper it seemed to have virtually every "tick list" item for a modern MMO/game:
- Flash based
- All in the browser
- Embeddable to other sites
- 3D importing and UGC
- Scripting and support for game designers
- Marketplace
- Level system
- Missions
- Able to build your own worlds
- Facebook connect support
- Live streaming support, highly concurrent spaces
- Designed by famed MMO creator Raph Koster
- Lots of buzz!

Yet with all of that going for it, it failed to gain traction and the decision made to close the site down (the company itself is continuing, perhaps building its own game based on its technical platform - my guess, no inside info)

With so much seemingly going for it, the key question is why?

Pondering on my own experience on the site and chatting with some Metaplace users and observers there are a few issues that I think were at play...

1/ Avatars didn't seem to "match" the 3d isometric environments

One thing that struck me on Metaplace was the beautiful backgrounds and environments, in lovely isometric view of 3d (pre-rendered) models. Looking like something out of a wonderful picture book, yet the avatars themselves seemed very simplistic and 2d sprite looking. This has a bit of a jarring effect, which seemed the avatars were just stuck on top of the lush backgrounds, and this could have made it difficult to connect emotionally with the avatars perhaps

2/ Avatar customizations?

One thing I've learned in my own experience running an avatar community over the past year is the importance users put on self expression and customization. Everyone wants to wear the style they want, whether emo, punk, futuristic or sexy. Style is important! Actually Metaplace had quite a bit of diversity in looks but perhaps not as much as needed, and it didn't appear the UGC component was applied to helping out in this regard (we have 1000s of user created fashion items in many styles, but still we get users telling us they can't find what they are looking for!). Some have suggested it was the avatar itself being too small, but Habbo and Gaia disprove that theory for many millions of users. For those though used to 3d avatars in other higher poly worlds such as SL, clearly they couldn't accept the MP avatars.

3/ Built for the builders, but not for the mainstream users

This one is a bit clearer, there was a great amount of feature support and tools added for world builders, but less tools or attractions for your average every day user. It seemed like a classic chicken and egg situation - not enough users for attracting game devs, and not enough games/content to attract users? The existing games on the site were ok but not up to the same level as many great flash games now, and the social elements and avatar stickiness perhaps wasn't up to many average users expect. Perhaps MP should have jumpstarted some high quality gaming with internal development and showcase, and in parallel giving users something to get hooked on...

4/ Who was the audience?

This is an interesting one. When I spent some time on the site I was struck how there seemed to be two distinct groups of users. Those older, technically proficient game dev types who loved being able to tinker and create world. And then a very young tween/young teen female set with "HoT ChiCs" clubs and looking for 14yo boyfriends. It almost seemed to confirm the 2d avatars suited the young female crowd and the game APIs suited the game devs.

But there didn't seem to be the missing middle audience, and the older "mainstream" users that you would see on sites like Gaia. I can't say this definitely as I wasn't online that much, but it did seem hard to understand who was the target user for this

Applying lessons?

All of this is very timely as we've just launched our own 3d web world in Frenzoo, funnily enough the same week of Metaplace closing. The shutdown really brought to light a few things that I we're well positioned on, or areas we have to strengthen up and fast...

1/ Matching background with avatar - we've had this problem for some time, having great 3d avatars but only flat 2d backgrounds. This was frankly hurting us for retention and a big driver for jumping to full 3d environments which we've done with this launch - now it just seems to look right.

3d avatar and scene in the new Frenzoo beta

2/ Having strong character and outfit customizations so people can identify with and express themselves through their avatar (a lot easier in a higher poly 3d environment thankfully, although much room to improve around body shapes etc)

3/ Balance content creation and social tools
This is not easy, we've tried early up like Metaplace to have a lot of content importing tools (although not as far as scripting support etc) which has helped a lot build an initial set of content, but in doing so we have lagged a bit in social features (eg parties, hangouts etc), which we're now rounding back to rapidly. Our own experience bears out that this is crucial for average users having a good experience and wanting to return.

4/ Audience... ah the challenge of knowing who you should target, go broader and aim for wider penetration, or go nicher and aim for higher monetization etc It's something we're still figuring out but getting better at understanding how we make those decisions. Usability testing and focus groups are great avenues to do that. We have now realized we need to raise the average age and make the site more mainsteam friendly, which it a road we're heading down at quite a rate of knots...

Final thoughts on Metaplace

All that said, I still think Metaplace had so much going for it and would have been able to be successful over time with more iteration and community building. After all it took Second Life quite a while to get early critical mass. Sadly it appeared they didn't have that luxury or decided to steer the boat to a different direction. Metaplace had many features that were perhaps ahead of its time, and no doubt will be incorporated into other virtual worlds.

PS - It's always sad to see a virtual world end, I joined the final concert in the lead up towards midnight on 1st of Jan and the spirit of those staying to the end was admirable. I give it to the Metaplace folks for handling the shutdown announcements and closing professionally and with a lot of respect for their fans and users. Wish them all the best with the new project, with a lot of learning behind them I have a feeling it will be a success.

Online worlds & Facebook

2009-12-11T01:02:00.000-08:00

Hang on to your hats, this is going to get interesting...

Meez avatar busting some moves

They are two of the biggest trends on the net right now. In one corner, online worlds & virtual chat. These products continue their ascent picking up millions of new users, more content and more revenue. They are places where people love escaping their daily lives into a rich online fantasy world and a countless virtual chat messages are being sent out every day.

And in the other corner, Facebook. We have seen the stratospheric rise of the all conquering blue and white website, with its goal to dominate the planets free time, and a large chunk of its working time too with its endless status updates and army of cute farming mini games.

Hungry to gain more users at low cost, online worlds are hungrily eying Facebook with its hundreds of millions of users as a way to expand their presence.

What's going to happen?

Well to answer this question we can look at what is already happening.

There a number of online worlds with avatars that have made some forays into Facebook, in some cases dipping their toes in the water through to all out jumping right in. The different approaches have varied widely in their level of success in these early days, and no doubt there will be a lot of re-adjusting and scrambling to make the most out of the platform in months and years to come.

But first things first, it's important to define the, broadly speaking, two different types of online worlds out there today, because they both have radically different options when it comes to Facebook.

Download client worlds

Second Life, one of the largest download client worlds

You know, the type that you download and install, show up in your start menus and run standalone from your internet browser.

This has long been the defacto standard for 3d virtual worlds, and the two largest 3d online worlds, IMVU and SecondLife both use this approach as well as many others such as There.com

Web browser worlds

These are the 3d worlds that are websites that you access and experience by using Internet Explorer, Firefox or (insert your favorite browser here).

They are not run separately and most use Flash or perhaps a browser plugin to enable the 3d graphics. Some examples include Smallworlds, Frenzoo and Meez. Traditionally they have been less graphically demanding than their download client worlds, although increasingly that gap is starting to close.

So what's possible?

Now we have the definitions sewn up, let's take a look at what's technically possible for integration into Facebook:

The "Link Elsewhere" approach

Let's look at a couple of examples, IMVU, a client download world has a Facebook application that allows you to show and share your snapshots from the game world, view outfit challenges etc but doesn't let you 3d chat or dress up etc. For that you link to IMVU.com to download the client and then run it separate from your browser and facebook.

Given the huge user base on IMVU and the success of the platform, the number of people using the application is small, likely due to the limited utility it offers within the app. In fact there are far more people who have commented on the fan page on Facebook than user the app. All the action is within their download client.

A similar story with the There.com with their app, "Here and There" that similarly allows you to share your profile / pictures and other limited information. At only 44 monthly active users of the app yet in the millions of accounts on their worlds, it shows the limited appeal of simply a "share your profile" type app:

Self contained experience

One example of a web world who offers a full experience within a Facebook app is Smallworlds. You can join, play, chat and have all the features on the Smallworlds website without ever leaving Facebook. It makes for a richer and more user friendly experience:

At over 100,000 active monthly users and growing, this is an example of an app that is working well.

So what's the conclusion?

Pretty obvious from the above, right?

The level of engagement appears orders of magnitude on the self contained apps on Facebook, proving people in Facebook apps prefer to stay there (simple enough). Forcing people to leave the site to do some or most of the functions translates to a fairly lackluster engagement with the app, so the numbers speak.

Online world operators, take note!

Asides and sundry

1 - What about Facebook connect?

You're right, apart from integrating an online world into Facebook, the reverse is possible - enabling Facebook within the world to help make registration and sharing to friends easier. This does work, and increasingly it's becoming more prevelant, especially amongst the newer websites (for an example, check out Metaplace)

2 - You didn't mention anything about Facebook casual games or apps like Buddypoke?

You're right again, more and more we're seeing cute avatar apps and games that started on Facebook branch out into more sophisticated offerings within the platform, with features and functions akin to some web virtual worlds. The lines are already blurring and in a couple of years they will disappear, in this authors humble opinion.

3 - What about a product (fan) or group page on Facebook?

Yeah, but that doesn't really count - there is no integration between the world and a Facebook fan page, it's just another channel to publish information and interact with users, but no practical linkages between the two.

4 - Online worlds and games?

What works in online worlds doesn't necessarily work in Facebook apps. Pure chat apps on facebook haven't been that successful, the ones that have been usually adapt or incorporate gameplay elements. People like to play games on Facebook, meeting new avatar friends is somewhat secondary.

Pre Christmas Speed Dating Event on Frenzoo

2009-12-10T00:02:00.000-08:00

Frenzoo is again organizing a speed dating event in 3d avatars, Christmas themed. The place, date and time will be Sunday 14 December 9:00 pm - 11:00 pm (EST. Time) in Frenzoo's 3d chat.

In these two hours, people online are to be chatting to as many users of the opposed gender. Also, according to the event's description there will be a surprise effect. Wonder what it could be..

Speed dating event in Frenzoo

2009-11-26T02:56:00.000-08:00

Frenzoo, the online world will held a speed dating event this Sunday, from 9 to 11 pm EST time. This is the first time this type of speed dating chat session has been held. I'm really excited!

Image from www.ehow.com

Between 9 - 11 pm, when you random chat you'll be setup with someone of the opposite gender. I've heard there will also be a special 3d effect happening at that time. The effects are already made and look great. Who knows, you might meet the person to share your virtual life with?

3d fantasy & art in virtual worlds

2009-11-22T23:56:00.000-08:00

Entry in Koinup 3d fantasy art contest

They are realities not bound in reality... fantasies are at the core of dreaming.

As a genre, "fantasy" is loaded with magic, mysteries and supernatural powers. It's easy to lose yourself within a well crafted novel or movie.

Thanks to recent technology advancements, free-form online worlds are now a perfect platforms to actually live out a fantasy experience - they are open platforms where the only real limitations are in the mind, not in the pixels.

Second Life's powerful 3d creation tools and savvy userbase has led to some stunning fantasy sims where members roleplay and interact both in and out of character.

Other platforms such as IMVU have various groups and 3d rooms devoted to fantasy roleplaying (see one of the many Harry Potter fangroups) and on Frenzoo people can mod sims and make their own fantasy fashion and environments.

Fantasy art on Koinup

Some of the best fantasy art is now on show at Koinup, a cross world community for artists and non-artists alike.

A group has been setup and contest currently live to showcase the best of the best, from all the virtual worlds and also games such as The Sims. It's well worth the visit to help spark your imaginations..

Anatomy of a web usability test

2009-09-09T22:00:00.000-07:00

A regular usability test at the Frenzoo office

In developing a new free 3D avatar community on the web, we've learned the hard way about the critical importance of real life usage feedback.

Web usability testing is a well developed field, yet is a practice we've only adopted in a structured way in past months, and it has been a revelation.

There is something reassuring about developing additions or changes that go to directly solving problem areas identified observing real, unbiased usage. Previous guessing about features best for the Frenzoo user (often well intentioned but misguided) has been replaced by practical improvements.

Previously we would rely on surveys, forum polls and usage stats for user feedback, but whilst useful - it can't tell you why a person doesn't know how to get to the closet from the shop, or how to change skin colors, or how to accept a chat conversation.

Now, we run in-office usability testing every 2 weeks, and it drives the majority of our roadmap. It goes something like this...

1. Recruitment

A week in advance, we make some posts in local active discussion forums looking for people who like games/avatars/internet to spend 2 hours helping try a new site. We don't divulge the name of the site, so as not to bias any of them beforehand - the aim is to see how they react and use the site for the first time.

We offer about $US 23 for the 2 hours or work, which gets a good response - especially from University students who have free spot in their study schedule.

2. The right number of people

We aim to get between 4-6 people each session. Less than that and we can't draw some strong conclusions across the whole group. We also need a balance of guys and girls and enough people so they can chat amongst themselves.

We don't exceed 6 mainly for practical reasons - we don't have enough people to individually watch the participants and make notes on what problems they face.

3. The setup

We equip screen broadcasting software on the participant machines and clear the browser cache and settings to default. We then enable the other team members to be able to see the participants screens so usually 1-2 people can observe "remotely", whilst 1 team member is sitting next to the participant to ask questions, take notes up close and help if they are really stuck.

4. The session

The people arrive, we give them a brief introduction and explain that they should use the website and try to do some things on the site. We make these fairly high level to give them flexibility to see how they should achieve it, and also to not "spell out the instructions" and devalue the test.

For example:
- Go to the website and tell us your first impressions
- Create an account
- Go shopping and make your avatar look great
- Chat with someone and make friends
- Create a cool Tshirt
- Enter a contest

We observe them, and typically only ask questions or give help if they appear stuck or confused: "what are you confused or frustrated about at this moment" etc

After the individual participants trying it themselves for 1 hour or so, there is a 30 minute summary discussion at the end to gather qualitative feedback

5. The debrief

After the participants have left, the team records all the usability problems observed in a shared Google spreadsheet (and any bugs found are also logged) then there is a team discussion to consolidate it. Lots of head nodding and everyone really understanding the issues.

5. The next steps

Then the design team will come up with the improvements suggested, be it new enhancements or UI tweaks, and assigns the priorities to them, and these are then scheduled into our release plan.

Then 2 weeks later we go through it all again, and see how the improvements we have implemented are working out in practice, and what are the next set of problems and opportunities to conquer...

With vSide now gone…what 3D Avatar options are left for Mac users?

2009-07-15T23:55:00.000-07:00

Many people in the virtual world of avatars will be sad to see the much adored vSide community go...but after they are gone, what options are left for all of the Mac users out there? Many worlds that use client downloads like IMVU and Twinity don't support Mac. That’s why we’ve decided to take this unfortunate opportunity to do some research and make sure that no users are left out of the mix. The list below is comprised of 3D avatar sites that are compatible with Mac operating systems.

Second Life

It’s difficult to consider Second life just another avatar community, simply because it is exactly

what the name states – a second life. Second life is a downloaded program that takes users into an expansive virtual world of design, community and creativity. A couple fair warnings before getting to deep into the site, the program can be somewhat slow and since the majority of the users tend to be older the content can be quite mature (sex oriented) at times. The good thing is that they do offer a Teen Second Life also for younger enthusiasts. Although many of the items in the marketplace are free to obtain, it should be noted that most of the popular items among users do require payment in the form of Lindens. Ultimately the choice is up to you for how deep you wish to involve yourself in this Second Life, so go explore and decide for yourself!

Frenzoo

Frenzoo is a new 3D avatar community focussed on lifestyle and creativity. Inside the site, users have the ability to create cool and expressive clothing, accessories, hairstyles and more. Best of all is that content creation is free and easy to use, even for those who have never touched a graphic editor before. Some of the newest features offered to users include creating your own dance moves and pose animations in a fun and easy-to-use creation format, and they even offer features for those of the 3D creators out there. Perhaps the best part is that once you have downloaded a simple plug-in for your browser, no reloading is required, everything is contained within the browser window. Since the age requirement for Frenzoo is 13 and above, this game caters to both younger and older generations alike. Don’t let us spoil all the fun; go check it out for yourself..

Hangout.net

Hangout is a more recent entry in the virtual world space. It supports Mac and is browser based (there is a small plugin to install). It lets you have room and invite friends to chat there. Using the service can be slow to load, although the graphic quality looks great when it comes up. The avatars are cartoony and cute. Like Vside and unlike Second Life and Frenzoo there is no content creation, you need to choose from their predefined items. One problem at the moment though is that there is never anyone else online which makes it tough to find people to chat to.

Just Leap In

Just Leap In is a 3D room based site similar to Hangout, and high quality graphics and even physics (you can play bowling by moving around objects) It has more offline functions like commenting to let you leave messages for others when they are offline. The spaces let you arrange your rooms as you like which can be fun to do and make it look perfect. However as with Hangout, the biggest problem is that there is no one online to chat with, the community has yet to be built up.

As stated before, each of the sites listed above are supportive of the Mac platforms and enthusiasts. Take some time to go explore all that each of them have to offer. Who knows, you might just meet some new friends and a new community that is perfect for you!

Interview on creating a new virtual world

2009-07-15T20:50:00.000-07:00

There's a new interview up on 'Inside the Webb' which covers all about how Frenzoo, the 3D avatar style community was designed and got off the ground.

Here's the intro to the piece:

For those in the industry or just interested in the web in general, it's a good read. Check it out.

Top 5 Avatar Sites Offering Free Services and Features

2009-07-07T20:58:00.000-07:00

Back on the hunt for finding the top avatar sites, we’ve decided to pick out the top sites offering free services and features to users. Each of the top sites listed here offers something different and unique to users in the world of avatars and design. Whether it is in the form of creation, design, social networking via 3D chat or just the ability to try some different online personalities, these sites will be sure to entertain your imagination without breaking the bank right away!

Second Life

Second Life does a great job of allowing users to work, love, shop, explore and play without spending serious amounts of hard-earned cash to do so. The company offers a free online virtual world that is imagined and created by you, its users, for the ultimate customizable experience downloaded right to your desktop. Included in the free membership from Second Life is the ability to customize your own avatar, building opportunities, 3D voice/text chat and membership also includes a sign-up bonus of 250 Linden dollars (Second Life’s form of currency which can also be purchased separately). If you’re lucky, sometimes veteran members of the site will locate newbie’s to not only help them get started on the site but also offer up some articles of clothing to expand on your look! Create your avatar and start exploring today!

Frenzoo

Frenzoo is a unique 3D avatar community for fashion and lifestyle inspired individuals. With your free membership from Frenzoo you can start by shopping or designing your own clothes and accessories to customize your avatar as you wish. The site offers enough free items in the shops to get your adventure started, and also provides video tutorials to get you started creating your own fashion. Frenzoo, along with Second Life are the only Top 5 sites which offer the create feature to its users free of charge, which is a big bonus to users who are interested in trying out their skills at designing their own fashions. It should also be noted that the creation process is much more user friendly and less intensive than the process offered by Second Life. Meet new friends, customize your avatar, open your own shop, decorate your home and share it all on your personal profile. Below is a picture of the ‘create’ function that allows users to dream and create their own fashions. You can also refer to the chart of pricing below to get a better understanding of the cost breakdown for Frenzoo and the other sites listed. Frenzoo was an easy pick for a spot in the Top 5!

Meez Online Community

The Meez online community is another great free option for users looking to expand their imagination in an online virtual avatar experience. The Meez nation is an online collection of ‘neighborhoods’ serving numerous interests and groups of users. The free membership offered includes the ability to experience the virtual world, customize your own avatar, and play games and converse with others in the forums. Meez is also the only site listed in the top 5 that does not offer any type of user generated content.

Similar to other sites listed here, Meez offers a form of currency for sale that can be used to purchase new items for your avatar and further your creative imagination, although they are not required to start your adventure today!

IMVU

IMVU is the only option listed in the top 5 that does not currently offer support for Mac users, but they do have some great features that are free of charge for all of you PC users out there. In IMVU users are able to create their own Avatar and chat in a 3D experience. Also included in the free membership to the site is the ability to customize your own homepage. Unfortunately many of the options in the marketplace on the site require purchasing, and users are only given one set of clothes or outfit upon registering for a new user account. If you, the user, are interested in expanding your look or wardrobe, coins will need to be purchased in order to do so. The choice is up to you!

Stardoll (2D)

Stardoll currently lays claim to offering the largest online community for girls who

are interested in fashion, shopping, decorating, creativity and making new friends from around the world. Free features of the site include the ability to customize your MeDoll avatar, shop for new items, play dress up and decorate your own suite. Membership on the site is free, but again similarly to some of the other Top 5 sites listed, they offer the choice to purchase more of their currency dubbed ‘stardollars’ for expanded purchasing and customization options. Many of the free items offered in the shop are of basic design, with some of the nicer and detailed items reserved for users with VIP status or costing coins.

Item cost/payment breakdown

Well, there you have the Top 5 avatar sites offering free services and features to you; the creative and imaginative users. We are confident that you will find something of interest to you and hope that this article helps you in your adventures, so go check them out and make some new friends in the process! Enjoy!!

Avatars and Identity - a chat with Heidi aka Stylite

2009-06-29T21:16:00.000-07:00

One of the fascinating parts about running a 3D avatar community where you can create your own virtual style is seeing the interaction between avatar and their owners real life identities.

To be honest, when Frenzoo first launched its beta, we weren't really sure what to expect but now we have built a community of members its interesting to see the actual behaviors at play.

Whilst there are many enjoying pure dress up, avatar roleplaying and fantasy elements, we have seen a LOT of crossover between real life and their 3D style on the site. I guess thinking about it it makes a lot of sense - the driver of self expression and showing a unique identity remains important in a virtual social environment as a real one.

Heidi Ulrich, one of the active members on the community under her avatar name Stylite (picture above) shared her thoughts:

Welcome, tell us a bit about yourself in real-life?
Hi! I'm a 25-year old girl from The Netherlands. In daily life, I'm a student in the field of Concept Design. I'm about to graduate, and then I'll be Bachelor of Arts. But I'm interested in far more than arts only. I'm often busy with computers and graphic design and I try my luck on all kinds of hobbies, like dancing, singing, photography. Lately I have developed a 'passion for fashion'!
How did you find out about Frenzoo?
Recently, my mom started a blog. To support her, I read every little piece she wrote. One day she blogged about having entered a summer dress design contest. Eager to join, I Googled for the contest. Frenzoo.com was the first hit. I forgot about the design contest and signed up :)

What attracts you to stay and get involved in this avatar community?
Well as I said, I like to try my luck on all kinds of art forms. I have tried clothing design in reallife, but me and my sewing machine don't go so well together. So my creativity was kind of blocked at that point, until I found Frenzoo. Another benefit is the 3D engine. I often work with 3D in Cinema4D and I have once done an attempt to create clothes with it. But there's so much technical stuff to overcome before you can start on the actual design - it just kills the spirit. On Frenzoo, the templates, the Unity engine: it's all there. I can focus on the design rightaway.

So is there a connection between your virtual character and reallife?
Yes, I think there is.

I had - and have - no wish to create a dream doll. My avatar is my dressdoll, and in a way, she represents me. The avatars are not dramatically skinny or have weird 'attractive' deformations. Lately, I have been playing with my avatars looks for a bit; I have tried on different hairstyles and clothes that I wouldn't wear in reallife. And now comes the funny part: by mixing and matching clothes on my avatar I have discovered some new styles that I actually fancy to wear in reallife. And, when I go shopping, I often see things that I'd like to customize for Frenzoo.

So you see, it works both ways!

Thanks a lot Heidi !

I'd love your comment on this or suggestions for future topics. Feel free to leave a note.

2009 World Intraverse awards and thinking about usability

2009-05-12T22:14:00.000-07:00

Last week I had the interesting pleasure to be invited into an event in Second Life celebrating the winners of the 2009 World Intraverse Awards.

Our 3D Fashion Game for Girls, Frenzoo was one of the winners, awarded a Special Mention of the WIVA jury as the "most global 3D fashion centric achievement", and we were one of two companies from Asia in the winning group and addressing the crowd, the other being China virtual world - HiPiHi

"Frenzoo's achievements led us to believe that soon it will turn into one of the most efficient 3D platform in the world" - Gilbert Reveillon, President of the Jury

The award was certainly an honor but also an interesting experience to be attending the ceremony in world. There were several technical hitches, 2 changes of locations involving confusion around teleporting vs trying to follow the ceremony leaders in walking there. One of the speakers was speaking too soft for anyone to hear, another way to loud and triggering the red on the UI speech icons.. many couldn't get their in-world speech going at all. It was all rather lighthearted and amusing at the time but highlighted a key point of usability.

Second Life is a particularly deep and powerful open experience and deserves its success - but is it mainstream for those who are not at the upper end of technology proficiency? In it's current state, I would argue not. For all the possibilities, many typical people would give up after a short attempt, confused by the whole experience. Which is no doubt why they are putting effort into revamping the interface this year.

It's something we also grapple with in our own community - how can we make it easier to get people into the front door? whether they come in direct, through our avatar blog. And make it easier for them to have their first interactions in a painless and fun way that's easy to pick up for a new or returning member...

Not easy at all to get a newbie friendly interface - and we're learning valuable lessons from our experience and constantly improving. However it's vital - the the most important thing to get right in a virtual worlds product, and rightfully at the top of the priority list...

VIP Membership and Currency Exchange in Fashion Communities

2009-04-16T04:21:00.000-07:00

In the era of social networks and communities, it is amazing how many different niche groups you can find. If your interests are Aviation, there are groups surrounding all aspects of flying. If you are in to Modern Dance, there are networks that focus on sharing experiences and tips on how to do the 'next' dance moves. What we focus on this blog are the fashion sites, the communities that allow for us to dream and design our own clothing and put that out to the rest of the world.

What we can do for free is endless, if you are in to fashion design you can check out any number of free design sites. We have listed many of those on this site previously. But what we haven't listed are the a number of sites that allow for you to design, but also that are paid! It does seem counter-intuitive, but many it is increasingly important to note that most of the free sites we have reviewed also have paid functions. What a better way to gauge your favorite than checking out the research we have done?

We have found 7 sites that we think are at the forefront of the design and community for fashion. Many of these sites have their own internal “currency” which in some cases are stronger in a US Dollar exchange rate than many country's own currencies!

Here is a table overview the statistics and figures for upgrading free accounts, or just getting more $$$ to fly in your virtual private jet...

	Currency	Cost	You Get	Users
Stardoll.com	Stardollar	$5.95/Month $39.95/Year	SuperStar VIP	29,280,000
Meez.com	Coinz	$10 Prepaid Cards	Get Coinz	4,600,000
IMVU.com	Credits	$6.25/Month	VIP Club	30,000,000
Frenzoo.com	Gold Coins	Special Selection	VIP Status	Not Disclosed
Secondlife.com	Linden Dollars	$9.95/1 Month $6.00/Month (year subscription)	Premium Member & Land Purchases	15,000,000
WeeWorld.com	Gold Points	$5 / 2500 Points	Lots of coins	26,000,000
GaiaOnline.com	Gaia Cash	$1 / 100 Gaia Cash	Ability to buy special items	17,204,000

In terms of direct currency exchange, Gaia, WeeWorld and Meez offer the paid coins services to offer a way out of spending many hours working to gather enough coins to purchase the expensive items. Offering the option to buy virtual currency needs to have incentive, and there are many cool items that can only be purchased by obtaining the respective virtual currency.

The other course of action for these paid options is offering elite services. In Stardoll, when you subscribe to be a Super Star VIP, you are get the ability to own your own fashion shop- allowing you to design, buy and sell your own fashion line. You get exclusive High-End designer labels from both Stardoll and from real world designers. The most interesting aspect is that you are able to send global broadcast messages to the entire Stardoll community.

In IMVU, the paid subscription allows you to be able to register your name, instead of having 'Guest' in front of your user name. With that you also get Super Powers, and VIP Badges in the game. If that isn't enough, you get many upgrades and features that are unavailable to the 'normies'.

One of the biggest names in virtual reality is Second Life. The coolest feature of any of these sites is the ability to buy your own virtual land for development when you become a Premium Member. You can use this to design the topography, housing, and to top this off you also get a monthly allowance of Linden Dollars.

The newest community in the bunch is Frenzoo. Since they are in Beta still, the VIP program is given as a gift to highly active members in the design community. VIP members get the ability to design clothing for either men or women and sell their designs in their own shop. Your profile picture receives a VIP badge, which makes you stand out in the crowd. There is a gold coin function to buy coins, but it has yet to be introduced to the beta community.

If you are looking into what deals are out there for getting new features and coins, I hope this helps you compare what is out there. We love to add functionality to every game we encounter, and with these seven sites there are many things we would love to get our hands on!

The Top 5 Fashion Design Sites on the Web

2009-04-01T02:28:00.000-07:00

Once again we are back finding out the best in Fashion sites, this time we want the best that allow designing of your own fashion.

In this Top 5, each of these sites carries their own unique touch to creating fashion. The best part of each of these sites is how much creativity is allowed by all of us users! It's no wonder these games are so popular, because instead of picking and choosing, we get to draw – shape – sew – and dream.

1.Girlsense
2.Frenzoo
3.Roiworld
4.Fashion Fantasy Game
5.Polyvore

Girlsense
The greatest part about designing fashion is sharing it with the world around you. Girlsense does a great job of allowing you to pick any item on the site and completely restyle it and decorate to match your imagination. After you save your designs, you can open a shop to sell the fashions to other designers in Girlsense and make yourself into a true fashionista online!

You get to choose your avatar at the beginning and build your way to the top, just like real life- and definitely as stylish!

Frenzoo
Taking dress up games into 3D is the future, and in Frenzoo, the ability to design clothes in 3D is a reality. Starting out in Frenzoo you can buy fashion or design your own, and there are more than enough items already in shops that were designed by others to spark your creative juices. Just like Girlsense, you are allowed to open a shop and sell your own designs! The create tool is very powerful for being online, as seen below- you get to design on a 3D mesh!

Roiworld
Delving into the world of fashion, Roiworld offers hundreds of mini-games designed to allow us to dress up avatars into any combination of clothing. Since this list is about “fashion design”, we draw attention to the 'drawing' function in Roiworld. As the picture shows below, you are able to draw ontop of your avatar into any design imaginable. Since this works more like a photoshop or paint, it takes a steady hand (not pictured below). The fashions you create on this can be saved, and then entered into competitions- which give you the ever sought after fame!

Fashion Fantasy Game
In fashionfantasygame.com, you get to design clothing combinations based upon color and pattern styles. Becoming a VIP in-game means you can design clothing color patterns, and place those onto any template in the design shop (below). The community has shops for each person, like the other sites on this list, and the important thing about this site is that each outfit gets rated as you design it! And of course, the first few times you will be a 'disaster'. It helps you get better, promise.

Polyvore
This site is the only of the 5 that uses real fashions (not virtual) but it involves a great sense of creativity, and that is what fashion design is all about. Within Polyvore, you are allowed to mix and match any fashion items and group them together, which is interesting because you can choose anything! The design creation center pictured shows how you can mix sizes colors shapes and accessories in one place and then save those designs. Even though there is no avatar to speak of, the site is definitely worthy of a top 5 spot.

There you are, our top 5 fashion design games- Give them a try, and we know you will find something you like! And maybe meet a few friends along the way.

Best Anime & Cosplay Sites Online

2009-04-01T01:29:00.000-07:00

One of the fastest growing trends in the USA is cosplay. Since the first true instances of cosplay originated in Japan, the trend of dressing to mimic the appearance of manga or anime characters has taken to online portals. Where you can enjoy 3D virtual cosplay by designing and dressing up virtual avatars at places like Frenzoo, IMVU and Meez, the following list contains some of the best and most active cosplay sites you can find on the web.

1. Cosplay.com

Cosplay.com is one of the largest and most noteworthy sites dedicated to the world of cosplay. Containing a marketplace, very active forums and even a cosplay calendar (USA). The best social feature of this site is the ability to buy and commission costumes!

2. CureCos

Cure Cosplay Community is a Japanese/English site that does a great job and utilizing user interactivity. The interface is easy to use and gives cosplay a great location to hang out and share photos of their best and favorite costumes.

3. Cosspace

Cosspace takes the MySpace approach to networking, giving a strong community with many different features enabling cosspace to involve users much more. There are costume ratings (by other users) polls, video submissions, quizzes, expansive forums, and the ever popular gallery. Cosspace is simple in design and supports 3 languages (English, French, Spanish).

4. Cosplay Walker

Speak Japanese? Perfect! Cosplay Walker is mainly in Japanese, but offers a fun space for the cosplay fan to share designs, and if you get rated the best out of other fans on the site, you get a front page mention! If only I spoke Japanese fluently so that I could get a front-page mention!

5. Cosplay Forum

We're keeping it international for this site too! This forum is all in French, but there is a very large presence in their discussions- and for good reason! The environment is very festive and has thousands of active users! When any cosplay forum has a group dedicated to this cos theme: Groupe Walker Texas Ranger : Japan Expo 2009 – you can count me in.

6. AnimeOnline

Want to share your favorite character or anime pic or even how you think stories should have ended, etc... Anime online has a large forum community backed by their own RPG game and Arcade online. The coolest feature is the 'Watch & Discuss' where you can.... watch and discuss shows with other people (Sorry its USA only). Which means for us in Asia we don't get this feature. The gallery has a lot of user content, and it is a good time to get ideas for upcoming cosplay events and even to design new gear.

7. AnimeNewsNetwork

The ANN is a great site for upcoming events/shows/anything! The first page when you see when arriving at ANN is the newsfeed, which is constantly updated keeping us in the know! How great is that! There is an Encyclopedia to give you a refresher course on your characters/shows and there is also an editorial wiki page to let you share your opinions. But don't forget the huge forum that is always buzzing with activity.

8. Daz3d

If you are in to ultra-realistic Anime & Manga design, Daz3d is a downloadable tool that assists in 3D design. I still don't know how to work it, but once I do I may actually make something worthwhile. Check out their 'Hall of Fame' for unreal photos!

9. Cosplay Meetup

An honorable mention, cosplay meetup is a site made on meetup.com, which different cosplay groups from around the globe have listed their location for other cosplay fans of anime and manga to join in with a large group!

The world within Cosplay fans of Anime and Manga is large and expansive, and we can't wait to dive into the different sites here and get to know more about our fellow Anime lovers! Enjoy and share often!

An avatar world without groups?

2009-03-12T01:14:00.000-07:00

Possible? Of course not!

It's a topic we've spent a lot of time pondering on with our 3D Fashion Games world, Frenzoo.

Groups are the foundation for any vibrant society, be they ones built on common interest, fashion or lifestyle niche, family ties, geography or any other combination: groups give much needed identity to any community.

By community we could mean a real life one, but also applies equally and even more so in an online virtual world. In a great post on "Ways to make your social space more gamey", Raph Koster summarized the 8 important requirements for a successful social space building of gameplay fundamentals, and he rated groups at the top:

"Provide clear group identities that users can join, leave, and signal to one another with highly visual markers."

In my view Lively, Google's illfated adventure into avatar communities, struggled to be succesful for several reasons, and one was the lack of context or identity in the world.

Justin Gibbs of Vivaty pondered aloud recently whether virtual worlds need context to be succesful.

"If a virtual world lacks context does that make it simply 3D chat, a social network, or game platform? Is that enough when I can get that in many other places?"

I think the answer is truly that CONTEXT IS VITAL - to build a succesful new community, context is needed on 2 levels.

1/ The world itself needs context
2/ Within the world, members need context

1/ Unless you are Facebook or SecondLife, the days of expecting any general purpose community to take off are numbered. We see this in some of the newer avatar world, where the main purpose is just chat... but on what topic?

On the other hand, picking a particular topic and shaping your site around that automatically gives context. Whether it's robots, wizards, Asian celebrities or in our case lifestyle and fashion avatars... the main thing is that there is a theme.

Members join for a reason and they enjoy and feel tied into being part of a community that has real meaning to them. Conversations start naturally and can develop from there.

2/ Within the world, people want to identify with other likeminded members, even within the world. I agree with Raph, groups are an important way to establish ties and identity. Just witness the phenomenal success of guilds on Gaia.

We just launched clubs on Frenzoo. Whether it's a Fashion Club or one for One Piece Anime fandom, members can create and further find meaning in the community. It's early days and the club functions are sparse to start with, but even just a place for people to join and establish context and identity, that is a big step forward to build the foundation of the community.

It will make striking up conversations and forming friendships just that much more easier and fun. And don't friendships make any community tick?

I'd love your comment on this or suggestions for future topics. Feel free to leave a note.

Best Dress Up Games Features - Top 10 List

2009-02-16T23:53:00.000-08:00

Addicted to dress up...

If you've ever spent hours perfecting a new dress for your avatar, you'll already know why fashion games are so popular and enjoyed by millions around the world.

Every day girls young and old roleplay as the virtual fashionista online. From the simplest flash sites for kids through to sophisticated 3D dress up games for teens and older, there are many addictive offerings in the genre.

But what are the "X factors" that makes them so appealing? Let's take a look at the "best of the best" - the Top 10 features from the hottest dress up games out there today. Let's go!

Runways - JoJo's Fashion Show 2
Celebrities - Stardoll
Fashion Design - Frenzoo
Games! - RoiWorld
Chat and Groups - IMVU
Making Money - Second Life
Role-playing - The Sims 3
Music and Dancing - Nurien
Building Your Label - GirlSense
Cheeky - MissBimbo

1/ Runways - JoJo's Fashion Show 2

Working in a boutique may be cool, but being a designer with a runway show is the high point of glamour for the virtual fashionista. So, it's no surprise then that JoJo's Fashion Show has become one of the most played dress up games on the planet and gone on to produce a number of spinoffs and sequels. It all revolves around the runway show, which appeals to girls young and old - witness the popularity of America's Next Top Supermodel.

You play as designer Jojo Cruz and you must arrange runways shows and arrange your models in the styles the game asks you to. The gameplay is fun and frantic, asking you to pull together items, and results sometimes random as you don't know how the combination will be "judged". Sometimes a perfect combination scores lowly while a messy mix comes out on top, but then again the seeming randomness makes it unpredictable and fun, and very addictive.

2/ Celebrities - Stardoll

Celebrities are the most popular people on the planet, so it makes sense that celebrity fashion doll games are amongst the most popular destinations for young girls on the web today. And the largest of them is Stardoll.

Stardoll mixes up the usual shopping and styling with a huge range of celebrity paperdolls, which look sharp. Who can deny the attraction of taking control of Avril Lavignes wardrobe, or dressing up Selena Gomez in something really "out there"? And the beauty of celebrities is that there are always new ones coming up and plenty to keep the game fresh and fun.

3/ Designing Fashion - Frenzoo

Why buy virtual clothes the shop when you can design your own? Attractive with teens, Frenzoo is a new 3D fashion games community where the focus is on designing your own fashion, hair and accessories for anime styled 3D avatars.

The design tools are fun and within a few minutes you can make great looking designs to match with beauty and accessories. With practice the type of virtual fashions you can create with time and some practice are amazing. And once you've created your own perfect look, the site encourages you to enter a variety of competitions for fun and fame. Be warned though, for those who like being creative with dress up and design, the site gets addictive.

4/ Games - RoiWorld

If guys can have fun with the many action and fantasy MMOs on the net, what about girls? Fashion games are the answer. Now for every Runescape there is an RoiWorld. RoiWorld is a new fashion games portals, with close to 1000 fashion, beauty and celebrity themed micro-games to play from.

There are a few basic types of games, ranging from drawing through to dress up, memory and time challenges that mix things up and give some variety. Most of the games can be played without needing any account, which makes it a simple and fun place to waste time.

5/ Chat and Groups - IMVU

If you want huge chaotic group chat together with 3D avatars, IMVU is the place for you. With over 30 million members and a massive amount of fashions available in the shop, you are bound to find your niche underground fashion style and chat with other like-minded fashionistas. Unlike other chat worlds that can often be empty and boring, IMVU's chat is popular, in large part due to letting you show off your own unique style and a strong content creation for professional developers. Want to find a group to chat about neo-steampunk style tips? Easy...

The clothes range from simple and clunky to beautiful, but to buy any of the good fashions is going to cost you real money. Here you pay to play - the free credits you get at the start won't last you very long at all. And it's a shame that you can't create your own fashions like in some of the other sites on the list, although what it lacks in that it makes up in the range of choice already available in the shop.

6/ Making Money - Second Life

Open virtual world SecondLife is the adult fashionista's paradise with masses of 20 and 30-something logging on and buying a huge variety of fashions. Part of the reason for that huge variety of clothes is the lure of real money - SecondLife runs a very large economy where residents can sell items to others and earn real cash. Even though the amounts are very small for the vast majority of designers, the motivation and desire is there - the addiction of making a sale and seeing an avatar wear your fashions is a big force.

Being an older, more mature world (the average age is over 30) there is a lot of adult themed content and the interface to use Second Life is very complicated, but if you're willing to work past those barriers, those into realistic avatars and sophisticated dress up can find a lot to enjoy in SecondLife. And who knows, maybe you'll open your own boutique there one day.

7/ Role-playing - The Sims 3

"Everyone on the planet either is a Sims fan or knows one". The scary thing is that with over 100 million games sold that's not far from the truth at all. In The Sims, the emphasis is on roleplay and life simulation. That core gameplay allows you to make a family, become a pop star or choose any path you choose, and dressing your Sims up any way you want along the way... as a result a huge sub-culture has grown around the game for virtual fashion.

Some of the most creative and stunning avatar apparel on the net in any game, community or genre is created by Sims fashionistas - this group of ultra hardcore dedicated fans of the Sims who mod the textures to make unique items. Add on top the increasing number of real brand fashion spin-ins to Sims such as the popular H&M expansion plus the next massive installment of the franchise in 2009 with The Sims 3- expect the legion of addicts around the world to grow for years to come.

8/ Music and Dancing - Nurien

Time to start practicing your moves... Wherever there are fashion runways there is music, but it's surprising more fashion games don't go one step further and include dancing to go with the music element. Nurien, a Korean studio is coming at it the other way around, and starting with an avatar dancing as its core game, and then branching out into fashion catwalks and chat game.

The graphics in Nurien are great and the dancing animations are very smooth and fresh, which makes the feature addictive for those girls who like to dance and make friends. The fashion element is also strong, with beautiful fashions, however it's a shame you can't design your own.

9/ Build Your Label - GirlSense

GirlSense takes the dress up game concept and extends it into fashion design and creating your own boutique. The sites Fashion Design Studio is quite a powerful tool and lets fashionistas create a wide variety of outfits. It's a really fun way to roleplay as an up-and coming designer and build up your own brand and customers. You can even purchase "ad space" on the site to promote your new designs.

Although the graphics are all in 2D and very simple, it matches well with the young audience of tween girls that make up the community, and there are lots of them! In fact, over 14 million girls have joined so far...

10/ Cheeky - MissBimbo

Well, all of the dress up games in the list are fun and addictive, but one stands out for being different. You could even say MissBimbo's key feature is its "cheekyness". Starting with the name, which flips the normal negative Bimbo into something quirky and fun to aspire to, although of course not without a lot of controversy.

"Bimbos" can shop for new clothes, become social butterflies and gain fame and event undergo plastic surgery like in the real world to , although you have to ask if this is a good role model to be showing to young and impressionable tween girls. Love it or hate it, it certainly is unique and stands out from the crowd.

So there you have it. The Top 10 features from the very best dress up games out there. Feel any others deserve a special mention or disagree/agree with any on the list? Give us your feedback!

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Nurien - High-Tech 3D Dancing Game

2009-02-03T19:51:00.000-08:00

You may have heard about Nurien, the avatar 3D dancing and fashion game that has been recently released in Korea, and will be available in other markets later in the year.

It's getting quite a bit of buzz around forums thanks to some fun YouTube demo clips showing off the graphics. We think it looks amazingly realistic!

It's a large 2GB+ client download game for Windows, using the Unreal 3 Engine and PhysX, so not as much for the casual web audience.

For more about it, check out the Frenzoo 3D Fashion blog, there is post about Nurien..

Looklet

2009-02-03T18:29:00.000-08:00

Not really into dolls and always wanted to dress real models? Looklet might be the thing for you!

Looklet is a digital styling studio where you play the role of a stylist. You can dress real models with real clothing and even add some accessories. Looklet lets you share your most inspiring looks on your blog or with your friends as well.

You can combine every piece of clothing, mix and match to create your own personal looks. Looklet stylists selects the latest fashion picks, the classics, the hot street wear and everything in between so the collective wardrobe grows every week.

Our thoughts? A must-try for every fashion addict out there!

Some screencaps

For the moment it's still a sneak preview beta version that is up.

Leila

Review of Unity 3D on Frenzoo

2009-01-29T00:04:00.000-08:00

Over on the Frenzoo blog, there is a new post called "Why we chose Unity".

It's all about how and why the Unity 3D technology was selected for the the new 3D fashion community, and how it has turned out since then.

For those who don't know, Unity is a 3D platform that lets you build browser based virtual worlds and games easily without having to program the low level engine yourself. It's having a lot of success lately and there are many new games and MMO like Cartoon Networks FusionFall are using the plugin.

Known avatar sites using Unity so far include:
Frenzoo
Just Leap In
Hangout.net

It's an interesting read for those who are in the virtual worlds or games industry and wanting a real-life view of using the platform.

Update - Also check out this blog note about Frenzoo & Unity (in French).

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Top 10 free fashion games for girls

2009-01-08T19:02:00.000-08:00

There are plenty of great avatar websites for girls...and best of all, most of them are free.

Here is a list and review of 10 of the best places to create an awesome girl avatar with the best fashions. All are fun websites where you can spend hours and hours making a perfect look:

1/ Stardoll

Desire to be like Beyonce or Angelina Jolie?

Stardoll is the place for making celebrity dolls and fashion dress up. It is easy to use, fun and has a huge amount of members from around the world. It's all in 2D which means you don't need to download any software and it's pretty fast to load. The dolls don't move but are nicely detailed and there's plenty of them.

Shopping is great and you can even buy virtual versions of DKNY and Vivienne Tam items! Apart from just creating looks and accessorizing, you can do a lot of other things in the community like creating or joining a club, making a lookbook, chatting and entering competitions. You can try creating fashions also, although you have to pay for their Superstar service in order to be able to save them or sell to others.

Stardoll is the biggest and one of the best sites in the Top 10 list and best for girls from around 7 to 11 years old.

2/ Girlsense.com

GirlSense is another site similar to Stardoll and also best for younger girls. You get your character and can dress her in a lot of fashions and accessories. The graphics are really nice and it's so simple to use.

One of the best parts of the site is it's new Girlsense Design Studio. Here you can create your own unique fashions - choose fabric, color and lots lots more - the level of control on what you can do is kinda scary! The Faceplace function lets you really set the mood of your avatar - how you are feeling, through different expressions and facial features. Apart from designing there is also private and public chat on chatterbox.

Creativity is really valued in the community, probably more so than on Stardoll and it's a great place if you want to express yourself.

3/ Frenzoo.com

Frenzoo is a web community where you can create amazing fashions and 3D avatars for free

The graphics lets your avatar do animated catwalk poses or little dances. You have to install a plugin, but you don't have to reload your browser which is nice.

The best part about this game is that you can create your own 3D fashions and hairstyles - swimwear, cool dresses, punk costumes, emo looks, whatever you can like.

Frenzoo is best for teenagers and older, the minimum age for using this game is 13.

4/ GoSupermodel.com

Gosupermodel is simple & fun site which has recently been refreshed. Designed for younger girls, the site has a game theme, as you first play the part of the assistant as a designer fashion show.

You can also skip the game and get straight into creation and the fashion system is simple but can produce nice results. Overall the avatars are fairly basic, but their style is fun and with its own personality.

The site uses Java which seemed to slow down my notebook, but if you're on a newer machine it should work just fine.This place is best suited for younger girls.

5/ Pupe.jp

Avatars from the land of the rising sun?

Ok, so it's not in English but the styles of the avis in this Japanese site are gorgeous and cute. If you want to make an avatar which is truly sweet then this is the site for you.

The graphic style is chic - although the dolls don't move they are detailed, and it's always refreshing to see what are the latest trends from Japan.

6/ MissBimbo.com

Yes, the name is controversial, and Miss Bimbo lives up to it's name.

Members can design their own bimbo, shop, create fashion and then the strange things: buying diet pills, getting breast enlargement surgery for your "bimbo". It is one of the few fashion games that has taken this "copy reality" of celebrity lifestyles to the real limit.

So the site may not be the best example for good beahvior, but it is popular for tween girls and it does have it's own humor. Enter at your own risk...

7/ i-dressup.com

As the name says, the site is all about dressing up, with tons of mix-and-match games for play. You can create your own Miley Cyrus if you like?

The site is well designed and has a lots of things to do. When shopping, you can also personalize some items, for example cropping a top or recoloring a skirt.

One special thing is that when you join, at the start you actually get two avatars. One is a more real world looking one called iLook, the other is more kawaii manga styled and called iToon. It's a nice touch letting you switch between more irl looks and fantasy themed styles.

8/ GroovyGirls.com

Groovy Girls is a place for a pre-teen set, with very young styled dolls and graphical style.

You can join chatting parties - safety is a big part of the site and the chat is limited to only a predefined set of conversations. Girls can also do up your "Mod Pod" which is your home and also design your own moves and go dancing which is kinda cool. Overall the site is fun for young kids, however many of the best features are limited to those with an "RSVP" code.

9/ BarbieGirls.com

If you're looking for one of the biggest sites for girls, you've found it in BarbieGirls. The site is professionally made and well designed with its younger members in mind.

You can setup your Barbie Girl avatar, which has a unique style like a cartoon. Then proceed to go shopping, mix and match, decorate your room with a range of furniture, visit the beauty salon and a lot more.

There are plenty of places to make friends and socialise, chatting is safe as well as moderated.

It's a great site as you would expect from such a large and successful company.

10/ DressupChallenge.com

As with Frenzoo, this site is great for teens with more edgy and realistic styling.

Your avatar can be designed with tattoos, themed or alternative clothes and accessories like guitars, and also be given a cosmetic makeover.

As the name sounds, a big part of the site is competitions, letting members fight it out to be the best, eg- punk rock chic, with the best rising to the top and featured in the showcase for winners. It's a great alternative to some of the younger fashion games such as Stardoll or Girlsense.

Thanks and hope you enjoyed reading this list! Do leave your comments and feedback

Why did Google shut down Lively?

2008-11-20T02:06:00.000-08:00

Official Google Blog: Lively no more Funny how things turn out...

Just a month ago I was in the Virtual Worlds London event listening to Niniane Wang, Google engineering manager talk about their fledgling new 3D chat service, Lively.

She spoke impressively, and sounded like they had a great handle on the teething issues and plan for the future.

Today we hear the news that Google has abandoned Lively. What a difference a few short months make.

True, expectations were sky high for Lively (it is Google after all) and they had a rocky start, but they had some unique elements such as being browser based and able to be embed anywhere.

And as IMVU and Meez have shown, it is possible to build an active and thriving 3D chat community with a bit of time and focus, and other focussed avatar sites (Stardoll etc) continue to grow rapidly and new players emerge and innovate.

So why did they kill it?

My guess is that it was considered just too removed from their core business of search and online apps.

And as we all know, the first things that tend to get cut during a recession are non-core businesses.

It was always a bit of a stretch for Google to get into the virtual worlds business, especially with no clear business model: there was no virtual economy, nor advertising in Lively. The closest consumer entertainment product they have is arguably YouTube.

Even at the London event Niniane admitted there was a lot of internal debate about business model and some things were still in the air, months after launch - for example whether there should be a Google virtual currency.

Put lack of business model together with a lack of track record or core competency in operating online games or virtual worlds it is unsurprising Google will exit the space...and the space will go on and grow without it.

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Stardoll opens up to user generated content - A review of Stardesign

2008-11-07T23:17:00.001-08:00

Stardesign taps into the creativity of the community
A first guest post by Cecilia Poon - welcome!

Apart from styling 2D avatars, Stardoll has opened up the door for their users to create their own items. This represents the first move of the rapidly growing community into user generated content. The new creation section is named StarDesign. It allows creation of unique looks for both clothing and interior design items.

You can easily design a nice looking pattern by the StarDesign tools. As shown in the images, pick the shape, colors, size of the pattern you want, rearrange them and create your own image.

If you are one of those who has talent in this area, you can actually design a Hello Kitty with these simple tools, not withstanding the copyright issues that would apply of course.

After that, choose the kinds of furniture you would like your pattern to put on. Stardoll only offers 7 templates at the moment, so you can just choose from sofa, cushion, curtains and so on.

You can then decide whether you would like to purchase the items or not after you design process. Superstars (paid subscription members) can decorate their rooms and MeDoll with the customized items.

However, StarDesign for interior is only available for paid members and those items cannot be sold in their own shop as well. Not surprisingly, there are not competitions for interior designs as well, as their main focus is still in fashion.

Conclusion
The main new trend in avatar communities or virtual worlds is to let users create their own items. Take a look at GirlSense, i-Dressup, IMVU, etc. This helps in deepening users experience and also generating millions of new pieces of content for the site. For Stardoll it makes a lot of sense, and it doesn't stop here. We're going to see more players open up more creation tools to their users, both paying and also free. This possibilities of a YouTube model in Avatar Fashion ... it's coming!

Thanks Ceci!

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Virtual worlds for real world design - interview with Shenlei Winkler

2008-11-07T22:23:00.000-08:00

IBM Global Business Services and Fashion Research Institute (FRI) partner to renovate antiquated product design methodologies.

Apart from entertainment and social mixing, right from the outset, virtual worlds have been used for product design. Most modern automobile design today is done with cutting edge VR visualization techniques. Yet when it comes to the apparel industry, much of the design work today is still done undertaken with antiquated techniques.

This is set to change however as virtual worlds come down in price and advance in capability and usability.

A recently announced deal with FRI aimed at IBM enterprise customers, allows designers to enter the virtual world, receive training on the rools and then create a design from concept through to prototype - with all steps short of actual manufacturing being done virtually.

I invited Shenlei Winkler from FRI to explain the project and its impact on the industry.

Welcome! What are the advantages for a apparel brand to go through this new virtual design methodology? Is it mainly about time or cost savings?

Apparel brands reduce costs, cut time to market, and reduce the carbon footprint of the industry. The system produces a true-to-scale model with high data fidelity, so the designer is providing the factory with a model that exactly captures what the designer had in mind. This means both the fit of the garment can be improved and that the designer can move design elements around on the model in scale. this is critical for under-served marketplace niches like plus-sized clothing can have more attractive designs developed for them.

In future iterations, we will be able to offer individuals access to our design system as well as factories who can take their vision and create it for them, rather than buying mass off-the-rack clothing.

Apparel brands generate huge amounts of data as they do business; right now it's virtually impossible for them to manage their designers in any real way. Our system actually enables these brands to more efficiently manage their design process and by extension, their designers.

Initially we thought we would be able to cut 1/3 of the design cycle time and up to 2/3 of the sample costs, but our early tests indicate we can do much better than that. I can't be more specific, but early results have been pretty stellar.

We're working on a comprehensive virtual show room capability, where purchasers can share feedback with a brand manager as well as being able to make purchases directly from the showroom. While we are aiming our product at the B2B market, at some point we'll license our solution for the consumer market.

Does this lifecycle also incorporate user feedback, and how would this be managed?

Yes. We're really focused on the design houses and manufacturers. The entire cycle is designed to capture input from all the users and do it in an extensible, searchable fashion.

Brands will manage their consumers as they currently do and whatever input that they accept from consumers will simply continue as before.

What are the steps to take finalised designs through to manufacturing and production runs?

Our final output in our system is what's called the factory-ready technical specification package, which includes all of the information that a factory requires to produce the initial physical prototype sample. Once the tech pack has been created, it gets handled by the design house and the factory in the same way they have always handled it. Our solution cuts out repetitive sample cycles, so one design, one sample, but ultimately the factory handles production runs just as it always has, but with better tech packs.

Thanks Shenlei!

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The War on Geekiness and 4 Other Trends from Virtual Worlds Expo 2008

2008-09-24T21:28:00.000-07:00

Note - This article first appeared in the brilliant FreeToPlay.biz industry blog, where I'm now a guest writer. Head over there and check it out!

Entranced by the success of IMVU, Club Penguin and Habbo, investors have poured millions into virtual worlds with new services blossoming out of stealth mode every week. But where is the space headed?

At last week’s Virtual Worlds Expo, several hundred insiders huddled to offer their own opinions on the future. Operators new and old alike, technology providers, and a smattering of advertisers and Hollywood players came together, and five interesting trends emerged:

1) The War on Geekiness

Electric Sheep Company’s Sibley Verbeck summed it up well, coining the phrase “Multi-Global War on Geekiness”.

There was recognition that to hit mainstream, the industry has to leave its geeky roots behind and focus on a simple and fun user experience. Barriers to entry plaguing early entrants - difficult navigation, large downloads and complex user interfaces - have to disappear. The presented alternative to shedding our geekiness was fairly stark: waiting years until Generation Z “Club Penguin” kids grow older. Not a new idea, but one that is really being taken seriously.

New players are paying attention – one example debuting in the US market at the show was Freggers – a game that made avatar signup and orientation a breeze. And it’s working - already Freggers has picked up a user base of over 500,000 in their home market of Germany, which interestingly includes many users in their 20s and 30s - despite a young, pixel-art style.

2) Say No To Large Client Downloads

“If uses have to download a client, you’re dead. You’re a science project only.”- Sean Ryan, Meez CEO.

One of the most lively panels was with the founders from Meez, Vivaty, Three Rings and Small Worlds and all shared the same opinion: standalone, heavy-client virtual worlds were going to fall away.

Daniel James from Three Rings, makers of popular Puzzle Pirates, believes 90-95% of visitors will not install a separate client. His new MMO, Whirled, is 2D Flash and his previous projects have both been Java.

However the panel disagreed about whether Flash was the only option for the masses, weighing up its lack of support for hardware based 3D.

Vivaty CEO Keith McCurdy argued for a light, single-click install, plugin being viable for masses. Installed in under a minute, he approximated a successful install rate of interested visitors in the 40-50% range (note- with Frenzoo we also see similar rates in our early field testing).

Google has taken the browser 3D plugin approach with its Lively service. And Avatar chat plugin Weblin recently hit 1 million unique users.

In Korea, a bellwether market for many a trend online, 3D browser plugins have been successfully used for some time, including just recently in MiniLife from Social Network pioneer Cyworld.

3) Virtual Brands Go Terrestrial

With so many entertainment and consumer brands moving into virtual worlds, it’s easy to overlook the opposite trend starting to emerge.

A handful of successful online brands are starting to move onto store shelves through licensing and partnership agreements.

Neopets is the poster child in this space and Habbo, on the back of some early dabbling in the space, hinted at the show of a major offline brand tie-up to be announced soon

Look out for more of these crossovers to come in coming months.

4) Branded Items: Not Free For Long

So far, in many virtual worlds such as Meez, branded items have been free. But at least for some items that will soon change.

WeeWorlds head of marketing, Lauren Bigelow, explained the plans of the 25 Million strong WeeMee community: to date, all branded items had been free, but some items will soon cost money, such as premium branded items like an upcoming Paris Hilton.

Why? Charging money for branded items increases exclusivity - and therefore buzz - driving the marketing campaign’s objectives. Obviously a revenue stream is a happy side effect as well.

Used well, it sounds like a win-win. Expect experimentation on branded item pricing to happen in coming months.

5) Taking Virtual Responsibility Seriously

Kids world Dizzywood, which announced at the show it had hit 500,000 users, recently used in-game activities to promote respect and responsibility by partnering with the Arbor Foundation for Earth day to encourage kids to plant virtual trees.

Club Penguin has done a lot with WWF and Habbo also has embraced social responsibility when it comes to their users, with a policy in place now restricting the maximum that can be spent on coins each month.

Do these socially responsible activities really pay off? It’s too early to say but respecting users and building up trust surely can’t hurt.

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The 0.1% Rule and Three Predictions for the Future of User Generated Content

2008-09-08T20:03:00.000-07:00

Note - This article first appeared in the brilliant FreeToPlay.biz industry blog, where I'm now a guest writer. Head over there and check it out!

We’ve all have heard the 1% Rule for content in online communities, as described by Bradley Horowitz. It goes something like this - within a community of 100 who consume content, there may be 10 synthesizers and only 1 true content creator.

That well accepted rule of thumb generally holds true on most community sites such as Wikipedia and Facebook.

How about in 3D virtual worlds?

With commercial incentive added into the mix, is there a much larger contributing group where more than 1 in 100 create their own content for use by themselves and their peers?

The answer is no.

The “0.1% Rule” in Virtual Worlds

In fact, “The 0.1% Rule” would be a better description. And it’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Take IMVU as an example.

The thriving 3D avatar chat community has over 20 million users generating $US 1M in item revenue a month. This explosive growth has been driven by arguably the largest catalog of virtual items in the world, virtually all created by users:

Source – IMVU public figures, June 2008

So, in this community there is a rate of approximately 0.5% of the registered users who have become developers (having paid the $US 7.95 fee to be able to create and publish content to the IMVU shop).

Over the past month, a couple of us did an informal study with developers to try to find out what they are actually creating. Here’s what we found:

Source – Polling & discussion with 50 developers, August 2008

What’s striking was that around 1 in 5 in our rough poll are actively creating true 3D content. That is, they are creating new 3D models / animation / meshes / morph targets as well as textures. We’re not privy to internal IMVU numbers which may be higher or lower, but the conclusion looks to be that 3D creators are in the minority of user generated content developers.

The majority, therefore, are using only 2D to create their content.

Returning to the content creation pyramid within virtual worlds, it now looks like:

3D Content Creation is Hard

An artistic sense plus at least a year of training and thousands of dollars for 3DMax or Maya present a very high barrier for 3D content creators. Even with free open source tools like Blender, the technical skill and time required to create quality 3D models or animations is significantly more than most people possess.

With such a low proportion of users in the community creating new 3D models, how does the whole system survive and prosper?

The conclusion: a well designed derivation system.

Deriving Power

Being able to take a single 3D product from the shop and then swap 2D textures to create radically different derived items is the key to unlocking contributions from the 2D-only crowd.

With new texture and transparencies, an elegant evening gown becomes a dark gothic dress. Blonde hair becomes black with bronze highlights… and so on.

And with a robust in-game economy, there is an incentive for creators to encourage derivation of their original products. Because when the derivative products are sold, the original creators - and anyone else in the item’s derivation chain - gets paid their cut.

2D makes the whole scheme work. Why? It’s simple and accessible, and there are probably over a billion people in the world who have access to Microsoft Paint. Of course, those with artistic talent will always be more successful, but almost anyone has the skills to create a simple 3D T-shirt with a photo on it.

Where Content Creation is Headed

The IMVU 0.1% example has shown that even with a small number of true 3D content creators, the power of derivation can spawn content diverse and numerous enough to feed a hungry userbase. So what’s next?

Here are three of my personal predictions for the future of content in virtual worlds:

Line Between 2D & 3D Blurs
With a few clicks and drags in the ridiculously easy Creature Creator from EA’s anticipated game, Spore, almost anyone can create their own unique, animated 3D creatures. Are these classed as new 3D content?

Cheap and Easy 3D Content Creation
As free tools such as Google Sketch Up get more traction in the marketplace, the required investment of time and money associated with creating 3D content is decreasing. That said, industrial-strength 3D model creation (Maya, Max) will remain far from mainstream.

One Step Textures
Today, it’s a two step process to generate 3D derivative items. First, users must create 2D images in a tool such as Photoshop, then import and integrate those images into a tool such as the standalone IMVU Previewer. Soon these steps will be distilled into an integrated web-based tool, as is already being done in some 2D avatar communities.

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Virtual Worlds Expo - Los Angeles September 3-4

2008-09-01T02:22:00.000-07:00

Hi there, I'll be attending and blogging from the Virtual Worlds Expo this week in Los Angeles.

Would love to meet any fellow VWers who are also there, my email simon at frenzoo.com

The rather awe inspiring theme is "The Future of Media and Communication". The event is probably the biggest I'm aware of in the space this year, and there are a bunch of fantastic people attending and speaking.

Looking forward to sharing with everyone the goings on later in the week!

Wallace & Gromit in Armani?

2008-08-25T20:44:00.001-07:00

What a month for fashion crossovers!

This great catch by Daily Style Essence really caught our attention.

It's a unique collaboration to put the much beloved Wallace & Gromit as models for Harvey Nichols, sporting fashions from Armani through to D&G. This advertising campaign not only is friendly & cute but really helps freshen up the brand image.

OK the story is a little off topic as it's not strictly virtual world related, but fits in with the theme.

And like virtual models, Wallace & Gromit will always strike the perfect pose and not be prone to temper tantrums or storming off mid-shoot like their human counterparts - ok, maybe exaggerating a little here, but you get the idea.

What do you think, like it? Or think characters like Wallace should stay in cartoons?

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A TomDoll is born...

2008-08-21T19:25:00.000-07:00

On the heels of their recent signing chic designer Vivienne Tam, girl avatar site Stardoll.com has lept into the booming China market with a tie up with heavyweight Tom.com

The new collaboration given birth to stardoll.tom.com, a site that follows the global Stardoll formula and functions with some localized content. Speaking of content, the site lets young girls play “dress up doll” with Chinese and Asian stars such as Maggie Cheung, Rain, Twins (a somewhat controversial inclusion given recent scandals?), Selina, Hebe and Elle from S.H.E among others. There is also the full complement of global stars including Paris Hilton, Angelina Jolie and Justin Timberlake.

It’s an excellent move by Stardoll confirms what we have known for a while - avatar fashion is big growth segment.

Right from early days the website supported multiple languages including Traditional Chinese used in Taiwan and Hong Kong and Simplified Chinese as used in mainland China. Without much marketing effort they had already seeded user populations in these countries, even prior to any market partnerships.

Having recently hit a milestone of 20 million global users and picking up a good revenue stream, will this deal let them cement themselves into the position as one of the largest growing communities on the Internet today?

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TheStylist - interactive style advisor for China

2008-08-14T19:24:00.000-07:00

Too shy to ask for fashion advice? Try Metersbonwe online style advisor..

You don't often think of China's retail environment being particularly high tech. Yet an new campaign by one of the largest apparel brands in China - Metersbonwe, bucks the trend, and is a great example of taking advantage of possibilities of online.

The casual retail giant has created TheStylist.cn. An simple 2D flash website that offers mix-and-match style advice for its customers, it is available both online and in their anchor store in Shanghai.
The aim of the website is to get more personal engagement with it's highly online literate consumer base, and help spark the buying mood. Already the site is having results, according to Marketing Interactive's Adaline Lau, helping raise in-store sales in the installed location by 9% - a significant impact to the top line.

Enlisting the aid of 3 idol pop stars as fashion advisors, the site asks customers to fill out a few questions about themselves - starting with gender, age, skin complexion and then moving onto interests, personality types.

The site then suggests clothes from its range, that can be mixed and matched on a simple manequin on the site. It's not that interactive, and you can't see how the clothes look or feel on a real moving body, but it's enough to give a flavour to users.

It's well conceived, as many consumers are shy about seeking style advice in store, and an online site helps them get what they are looking for in a more comfortable environment. There is no online shopping on the site and although it is a fairly simple site and restricted to one retail brand only, for what it targets it does it well.

TheStylist is a great example of taking advantage of online possibilities, and surely it will spark more interest from other brands looking to increase sales in store.

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Cosmetics and Gaming - Shiseido pushes the boundaries

2008-08-05T18:45:00.000-07:00

Shiseido Makeup Training - Project Beauty

You wouldn't expect the worlds oldest cosmetics company to be one of the most progressive when it comes to virtual technology, yet it seems the case with global cosmetics powerhouse Shiseido.

The Japanese brand, adored by girls across Asia and the world has embarked on a fascinating collaboration with Sega, a renowned video game maker. The result? Project Beauty - an upcoming makeup training "game" based on the wildly popular Nintendo DS handheld platform.

With help from the DS Scan camera accessory, the game promises to offer "live" makeup and styling advice to girls, as well as showing before and digitally generated after shots, similar to what is offered by makeover website Tazz.

Set to retail in Japan at approximately $US 60 together with the DS Scan, the package is pricey, yet still within range for many.
This is a really innovative move on Shiseido's part.

Similar to Brain Age and Nintendogs which defied traditional game genres and became breakout hits, this new form of casual entertainment (with a slight education flavour) has a lot of potential.

Not only is it likely to be commercial success popular with throngs of DS loving teenage girls in Japan (of which there are many), but also helps strengthen the brand's image as dynamic and in-touch with their new generation of customers.

Mobile phone and web next?

Update - Thanks to the reader who submitted the extra screen shot and official link!

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China & Virtual Worlds - Interview with Bjorn Lee

2008-07-29T01:47:00.001-07:00

VR Fashion recently asked Bjorn Lee to share his views on the state of virtual worlds in China and beyond.

Bjorn, an up-and-coming Internet entrepreneur from Singapore currently in stealth mode, was until recently with China virtual world HiPiHi, as head of business development.

Hi and welcome Bjorn!

MMOs and online gaming is huge in China, yet so far virtual world takeup seems to be slow? What's your take?

Yes, the simple answer is that virtual worlds have not cracked the code of fun like the game worlds have. There is also a steep learning curve right now that makes it difficult for the mass market to get involved. Right now, virtual worlds mainly appeal to the creative media fanatics and academics in terms of learning of the basic tools involved in user interaction.

Is that something all the virtual worlds in China face, or is it specific to one platform?

I would say virtual worlds are still a very new and misunderstood medium in China.

HiPiHi might the leader in the market, by registered users, and there are others such as Novoking. Even as the leader, the user adoption in HiPiHi had not been as fast as previously hoped for.
The challenge here is not just facing China-based virtual worlds, but really affirmative of the broader trends seen with Second Life and other open and free-form virtual worlds.

It might be a peculiar case considering how amazingly well games in China are doing, but again we must not fall into the trap of lumping game and virtual worlds together based on similarities of their technical architecture and interfaces, but more on the goals of their users.

So do you think it's possible for virtual worlds like Second Life, Hipihi and others to "layer" the fun on top of the basic platform?

Well, I think bloggers like Andrew Chen and Jeremy Liew of LightSpeed Ventures have some of the smartest ideas around this field.

I remember reading a post on how virtual worlds should not be built from a top-down basis of an entire world and then working downwards to the tools and interactions, but rather from bottom-up from each single user interaction, the latter if which is done well by the game worlds.

Do you mean in a similar to way that Gaia Online has been successful? That is, starting with avatar and forum and evolving elements like an MMO world ?

Yes.

I think it's getting irksome in some quarters to see the argument on how shardless worlds, where users all cohabit a common space rather than in silo-ed “rooms”, forums, becoming the model on which virtual worlds have to take to be successful. This argument for shardless worlds has become a technicality that seems to ignore the user need for interaction.

Mainstream users don't care about shardless worlds, as has been demonstrated in Gaia, Club Penguin etc.. They can have as much fun in rooms rather than worlds, so its almost a vanity exercise if some worlds focus too much on building shardless but empty worlds when they can populate rooms much easily.

I think games have a lot to teach us us how they design gameplay and build in incentive mechanisms to keep adrenaline flowing and loyalty sustained for their loyal players.

Aiming more at the bottom motivations and addictions of Maslow pyramid first before moving to the top?

Yes, sort of :)

So which virtual worlds do you think have the most promise?

I believe in any avatar-based web service that bring people together for fun and meaningful social interactions. It ain’t matter if they are 2/ 3D. Visual avatars are the new black, we are gonna see them kick text-based instant messaging butt, if not already.

A whole new generation is growing up accustomed to visual expressions of their emotions and feelings... I think the analogy of virtual worlds is better when used as an extension of emoticons in instant messaging. That is, turning that text chatbox into an extended and richer environment for visual user-to-user communication.

I am also bullish about the kids' worlds. I think a new generation is growing up and getting comfortable with how avatars should represent themselves on the web, not just a small picture on the IM, a social networking profile page. I might get blasted for this, but can u imagine how old-school Facebook will look to the college student in 2015?

So... back to China, what are the big players - Tencent, game operators and portals doing in this space? Do you see them getting active?

China companies who have a foothold in the instant messaging market stand a strong chance of promoting their more sophisticated products to their instant messaging user bases. Tencent is there, of course, but the fact that newer web companies, like Baidu is making a strong play with baidu hi - their own IM, says a lot for the fact that IM remain as centerpiece and heart of user acquisition that a successful web company must have in entrenching themselves in the minds of China's fast-growing web population.

We also must not forget China still has very low overall internet penetration. The new users way outnumber the old ones, the fact they are from single-child families intensifies their social needs for friendship/ kinship on the web medium that breaks down their limitations of physical space.

So instant messaging, is very important and I kinda think that virtual worlds will be appealing to a swath of the users who are new to the web, from the second-and third-tier cities.

We're starting to see collaboration of real world brands in virtual communities in US such as Meez, Second Life and Gaia. Do we seem the same happening in China?

The comparison will not be apples-for-apples, in china, we do know game worlds see quite a bit of attention from advertising, although its not as big as their non-advertising revenues at this pt of time.

Overall, i will say that real world brands have developed a substantial amount of curiosity in experimenting with virtual worlds in China, there's a lot of internal discussions at the marketing departments of large Chinese brands and their ad agencies. So the spirit of innovative thinking, but not action, is there.

The onus is really on virtual world companies to demonstrate their ability to scale up their user bases and substantiate their differences from game worlds in language that makes sense to marketers.

Any advice or suggestions?

In China, I truly think forums are key.

It's not just for virtual worlds - any web company seeking respectability is asking for trouble if they neglect their forums. Even for HiPiHi, the forums are way more active than the worlds - which is awesome for soliciting actionable user feedback

Thanks Bjorn! Feel free to leave any feedback or questions below!

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Creating your "real" virtual self

2008-07-28T20:10:00.000-07:00

Body scanning body check

3D body scanning isn't new, yet the quality and resolution of the technology continues to move forward by leaps and bounds. Body scan systems provide an ability to capture a real life person and apparel in a controlled environment and generate a 3D model in electronic format, for use in virtual world and many industry applications.

The space is actually quite broad - at its simplest form, a basic single webcam with face recognition (as used in most modern digital cameras) can be used to map a face and generate some virtual effects as seen here on the left, albeit with very limited quality and accuracy. This isn't actually creating a realistic 3D model, lacking the multiple cameras and depth perception of the scece.

However at the other end of the spectrum, multi-million dollar systems using a system of sophisticated and synchronised cameras and in many cases motion capture suits can be used to create extremely high resolution 3D models of humans, capturing every element of the body and with skeleton attachement, animation as well.

The technology itself is not new, having been used in military, fashion design, medical and other industry applications for many years now. However the resolution and quality of such commercial 3D avatar scanning magazines systems continues to increase.

Imagetwin, a new system announced from TC2 is an example - being able to scan a human body within 8 seconds and output in a resolution of 100,000 vertices or more. This resolution is high, and is well beyond what is used in most online avatar worlds today, which typically number under 10,000 vertices - primarily so that use computers can process multiple avatars on screen smoothly. There are a handful of installations around the world and for a (high) fee you can go through the scanning process and create your real virtual self.

However the reality of such scanning systems is that it for cost and complexity reasons it remains well for commercial use only - don't expect these systems to be popping up in peoples livingrooms any time soon.

And whilst their resolution of scanning is extremely high, it still isn't able to capture the extremely high resolutions that are used in today's state of the art CG movies.

Which means that images like the one below will still need imagination and artistry, not technology alone.

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Puma dresses up Sony Playstation Home

2008-07-19T00:51:00.000-07:00

Puma's Mihara Yasuhiro designs to be featured on the 'dress' platform.

dress, an extension to Playstation Home, is billed as an "interactive fashion magazine" with so called 'premium avatars', distinct from those in the normal Home service.

This particular collaboration was announced at Pitti Uomo, the annual menswear trade show held in Florence, with PUMA by Mihara Yasuhiro. This comes as the same time as Sony announcing Nike as another brand partner for Playstation Home.

Sony's dress lets girls go shopping virtually, mix and match their own looks in a studio, watch interviews, compete in runway competitions and more.

So what's my take on it?

Overall a good move and even more evidence of the inevitable march of real world fashion into online.

We're yet to see how the dress will look and play. Originally planned for 2007, the service has been perpetually delayed, and is looking unlikely for 2008.

There is also a very legitimate question mark about how lively it could be without more user generated content functions - very hard on a console platform vs PC. Also not to mention the PS3's focus towards more male hardcore gamers rather than the females who are drawn more to Nintendo Wii.

Yet, with the PS3's beautiful graphics the dress concept does have some potential within its install base, particularly in Japan. It will be fascinating to see how it plays out.

I'd love your comment on this or suggestions for future topics. Feel free to leave a note.

Vivienne Tam brings 'China Chic' to Stardoll

2008-07-14T19:59:00.000-07:00

Chinese fashion design icon partners with Stardoll.

Recently announced and already making the rounds of the blogs, Stardoll has added another impressive label to it's virtual collection of fashion brands.

Born and raised in Hong Kong, the New York based designer has launched her own custom storefront within the popular virtual world, as well as participating in judging fashion competitions and live chats with fans

Stardoll, a vibrant 2D avatar community nearing 20 million users has done an excellent job of providing a wide variety of in-house designed as well as real world fashion items to dress their virtual dolls.

Whilst nearly all of the users are tween up to mid teen, this hasn't stopped brands such as DKNY getting involved and building brand image and loyalty with a new generation of consumers. And fans have responded positively, the buzz spreads beyond just the Stardoll community:

Is the ice starting to melt, and the big fashion labels now starting to embrace avatar communities?

I'd love your comment on this or suggestions for future topics. Feel free to leave a note.

IMVU content queen - An Interview with Ann0820

2008-07-09T23:56:00.000-07:00

Behind the scenes of IMVU content creation with Ann0820.

Despite the launch of Lively from Google, IMVU for now still remains undisputed king of the hill when it comes to 3D chat and fashion.

Recently hitting 20 million users, there are literally millions of items of in the IMVU catalog to keep users happy and broke. Created by both amateur hobbyists and professional designers alike, these range from the simplest of profile stickers to stunning seaside mansions.

One of the most popular fashion designers on IMVU is Ann0820. Her fun and flirty creations (over 1500 and counting) have gained her a strong legion of fans for over 2 years.

VR Fashion was fortunate to get a chance to interview this Content Queen:

So how you got into virtual fashion design?

I played Sims2 back then and was looking for resource sites. Then I found IMVU by accident, made several friends & developed this habit of buying people gifts... and it was getting expensive. It all began with me thinking, "I have to earn credits to support my virtual lifestyle" haha. I am kinda thrifty. I think it's a good business for many.
Where do you get your ideas and creative inspiration?

I make clothes I see irl. Some of the things I made in IMVU were inspired by stuff I have in real life. But there are also clothing that people love to dress their virtual selves in, like cosplays, fantasy & fetish clothing... I browse magazines, net, for ideas.

Take us through the process of creating your products..

I haven't done meshes up to now, I do only texturing (to my frustration. haha). Almost all my textures are made for that particular item. I very seldom reuse textures/opacity maps.

I make the textures from scratch. Although when I first became a dev back in May 2006, I used real texture from photographs for a short while.

Usually, I'd start with solid color, just to see where the "cloth" falls on the model. Some details that would affect the opacity should be done also. (example: chains, bows outside the main clothing material).

After I get the desired shape and cut, I do the opacity based on the layers I have so far. I load that to the previewer and continue with adding final details like wrinkles, highlights, shadings, etc. Afterward, I do testing with other colors, testing which looks good with the design.

Of course, there are some colors which are "favorites" of buyers, namely black, white, & pink. I often release all the items in these shades or more.

I'd recommend these tips for making textures for new devs: Observe the mesh first if you're not that familiar with it. If a wire frame / template is provided, load that first on the 3d model so you know where the texture you're putting falls on the right places. If a template isn't available, use a colored grid. This is added work, but still more efficient than guessing.

It takes around 4 hrs for me to finish each item on average.
What tools do you use?

I use Photoshop... and a mouse? Haha But yeah, haven't invested on a Wacom.

What have been your biggest challenges?

At one point, it was the "customers." haha

You just can please everyone and some people can be very difficult to deal with. Recently, it had been the seemingly random changes of rules in the site. It's hard to keep up sometimes. Nonetheless it's all part of improvement, I guess.

What advice would you give for other aspiring virtual fashion designers?

First is Quality. Also, when the "fans" say "keep 'em coming," do it. Seriously. You always have to release new stuff to develop a habit on customers to check your store regularly. If you don't deliver, you're forgotten.

What does the next year lie in store for you?

I am not much of a planner so I can't really tell. But I do want to start creating my own meshes. Hopefully next year.

Thanks Ann!

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Lively.com review - Google takes aim at IMVU

2008-07-08T19:12:00.001-07:00

UPDATE - Why did Google kill Lively?

Here's a review of the new browser-based 3D virtual world.

Google just took a very big leap into virtual worlds with Lively. The news was first covered on TechCrunch.

Pretty interesting move from a search powerhouse! Although on first blush it seems quite distant from their core purpose in life, there are no doubt advertising implications they want to take advantage of. Here's a review of what the launch offering looks like.

Lively seems to be designed precicely as an IMVU killer focusing on simple, low poly fun 3D avatar chat and rooms.

Being Google you can just sign in with your Google account. After installing the browser plugin (a few MB) you can choose from a few different style templates for your avatar and have some simple level of customisation for hair, eyebrows etc.

Once done, you're in and can customise your own room, visit and room and "bubble" chat with others. It's all in 3D with animations and pretty smooth with a small number of characters on screen (although it slows down a lot in popular rooms).

The graphical quality of avatars is not high polygon, so it's not really trying to compete with Unreal 3 engine offerings or state of the art PC games like Sims 3. And credit to them for going a hardware acceleration approach using DirectX (anyone know if there is OpenGL support for other platforms and mobile??). Much better than taking a software Flash approach.

Some downsides are no MAC or mobile support (for now), no content creation (except for a handful of approved partners)- although with Google Sketch Up no doubt support at least for item creation and likely avatars will come. What will be interesting is how hardwired the avatar customisation is, which today is very simplistic.

The lack of content creation tools will mean for the moment IMVU will retain it's title as king of the 3D chat world, with it's impressive catalog and active development community. One big trend though for IMVU to look out for - Lively's ability to embed into other websites... opening up a whole new distributed community approach. This is something hard for IMVU to replicate without being browser based. The largest browser based avatar offering today is Meez, which uses Java and software rendering. They have an accessibility advantage if Java is installed already as well as an existing user base.

Most existing browser avatar communities are 2D or 2.5D, which will really face the end of the road as the 3D market starts to emerge and take over.

This is a big sign for the industry. In 3D space, I’ve got no doubt first generation standalone client-app virtual worlds like SecondLife, There and Hipihi will face tough competition and many will die out as the new breed of browser 3D apps rise up.

In our own case a while back we decided to stop our standalone client development for exactly this reason and move to web browser technology (we’re in alpha). Even though we were building a user base the writing was on the wall even back then and we made the transition early and set to take advantage with our coming launch. And although our target application and graphical quality is very different from Lively, we share common advantages in development.

The plusses for web approach are faster development (especially layout and GUI), ease of content integration to and from other websites, ability to support multiple platforms like MAC, PC, iPhone etc not to mention a hugely reduced barrier to entry for users are undeniable.

Google is very much targeting the masses with this offering.

So who is likely to get a boost from this move?

In my opinion, the targeted browser 3D apps like action games like InstantAction.com (which is really impressing with its "pick up and go" gameplay), Frenzoo for fashion, web MMOs (some really interesting things coming out of Korea), casual games, education etc.. anything with a unique focus, application and graphical style.

Whilst spelling trouble for client plays and 2D web worlds, Lively could be a big catalyst to get a whole new audience into avatars and virtual worlds, which is great for the whole 3D web industry.

What do you think?

A look at Nokia Playland with Sooff

2008-07-07T02:53:00.000-07:00

Nokia has launched a new branded virtual world campaign - Nokia Playland.

The site was done in partnership with Sooff, the technology provider and virtual world operator. The website is in Chinese and targeting a local market with a handful of simple fun games. This campaign is focussed on raising interest in a line of mobile phone products including the N95 8GB, N78 and 6220.

Sooff, also known as Show Off is a flash-based 2D virtual world that is targeted at local youth audience. Think Habbo in Chinese with improved graphics very local Hong Kong flavour.

It's an interesting move by Nokia and has gathered some amount of buzz in the online world. It shows them willing to move beyond traditional advertising model online and engage even more with their audience in the avatar communities they enjoy to spend their time.

To get in to the Nokia Playland, users only need to fill in their simple personal details, like email and username, then they can create their 2D avatar based on preset face, hairstyle and fashion items. It is 100% free to register as “players”. Inside Nokia Playland, there are 4 main zones which line up with Nokia features – “Snap Zone”, “Chic Stage”, “Beat Area” and “Playland Notice Board”.

Playland Notice Board – an introduction area of the Playland.
Snap Zone – a mini game which players need to take a particular snapshot, the less time taken and the less flame needed, the higher score the player receives.
Chic Stage – a mini game where users need to use the “Nokia Maps” function to find out where the headphones have been hidden inside the Playland.
Beat Area – a mini game where users need to hit arrow keys on the keyboard in rhythm to line up with certain beats of the music

The site is simple and easy to understand. Users can get the selling point of different series Nokia mobile through the games inside. Additionally, it create an interesting brand experience to the targeted group – primarily teens, by an avatar community which is fun and relevant.

Whilst there are chat and PM functions, the rest of the community features found in all 2D avatar sites such as friends lists, profiles and albums are lacking. And user feedback from those who have tried the site is that it is fun for a certain time while doing the handful of mini-games, but becomes a lot less interesting after.

The key issue from the user point of view is that Nokia Playland is single brand environment.

Existing Sooff users cannot use their avatar in Playland, nor interact or chat with Playland users. For the long term though, it's unlikely a single brand virtual world is going to have compelling staying power as a destination beyond the initial buzz. As can be seen by the success of sites such as Stardoll and Meez, mix-n-match platforms which let users enjoy many brands as well as user generated content have far better success in retaining and rapidly growing their user base.

However if the main goal of the campaign is to be a short-term creative & engaging marketing campaign for youth, then Nokia has certainly done very well.

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Brands & Virtual Worlds: K Zero Interview

2008-07-03T20:14:00.000-07:00

It's been a big month in virtual world news.

The leading player, Habbo announced a hitting a major milestone of 100 million avatars. IMVU, the pioneer in casual 3D avatars reached 20 million users and bringing in a virtual item income in excess of $US 1M per month.

With the space evolving so quickly, it's often difficult to keep abreast of the latest usage statistics and trends. This is where K Zero has taken the initative. The UK firm is now established as one of the leading analysts and advisers in the fast moving field. VR Fashion blog interviewed founder Nic Mitham, on the state of virtual worlds and brand involvement in them.

Tell us about Kzero, what is the vision and what projects do you focus on?

K Zero was founded in 2006. I recognised the emerging sector of marketing in virtual worlds and wanted to play a part in this development.

K Zero focuses in on four key areas:

Working with brands and companies looking to move into virtual worlds from a brand or marketing perspective.
Working with virtual world owners and operators (existing and in development) providing business planning services, brand positioning, product road-mapping and a host of other services.
Working with companies developing cross or between world services and solutions, such as interoperability, virtual goods and cross currency/asset management
Some work with VC's.

Apart from a few pioneers such as Ikea and H&M, many mainstream brands haven’t ventured into virtual worlds in a meaningful way. Any thoughts on why? And is that changing?

Well, many brands have moved into Second Life, most with disappointing results. Generally, most luxury, lifestyle and fashion brands are still coming to terms with Web 2.0 and trying to understand how to augment these applications into their marketing.

However, as we see the emergence of virtual goods and specifically clothing/accessories, these brands (led by companies such as L'Oreal Paris, DKNY, Ikea and H&M) will quickly realise the benefits of moving into virtual worlds. Not just from a real-world brand perspective but also (within the next three years) from a virtual revenue stream point of view.

What advice would you give to real world global lifestyle and fashion brands when it comes to virtual worlds?

Choose the world according to the demographics and capabilities. Many brands made the mistake of going into Second Life just because it seemed the cool thing to do. The problem with that was a mismatch in positioning, audience profile and presentation.

However, it's important to point out that for some luxury/fashion brands, Second Life is ideal. Just as Stardoll is really suitable for others, vSide and IMVU works for some etc etc. Traditional media planning plays a large role in virtual world selection AND you need a strong fit-for-purpose concept and campaign. Just being there isn't enough.

How do you suggest brands handle the sometimes thorny issue of User Generated Content?

I have a case study called the 5 Rules of Virtual Brand Management which goes into detail about brand strategies in virtual worlds. Generally, brands should embrace UGC and communities in virtual worlds because they can be leveraged successfully for NPD and market research.

Many virtual worlds today are single language. How do you see the global development of virtual worlds, any new developments outside of the US that could have global impact?

Sure, most worlds are generalist but have an interface in English. We're already seeing localised versions of virtual worlds coming through and a development we'll see outside of the US will be country-centric virtual worlds build and positioning solely for residents in a particular country.

Today, each virtual world is separate. Do you see avatar portability and interoperability becoming a reality any time soon?

Interoperability and avatar/asset portability is inevitable as the number of virtual worlds increases. What's crucial here though is how it's achieved. Just having the technology is not enough - people need reasons and catalysts to want to move between worlds, so the social networking side is where I see the growth coming from - Myrl is a company heavily looking into this.

In terms of what specifically will be ported, in some instances it might just be the buddy list and maybe a basic version of an avatar. For brands, this is a really exciting area, particularly from a luxury and fashion point of view because digital items will be able to move between worlds.

What’s the future? Any key trends you think will drive the coming 1-2 years?

5 key trends to look out for:

More vertical worlds : these are virtual worlds themed to a particular genre, such as sports or music. These types of world offer more relevance to new users rather than generalist worlds. When you first log in to a generalist world (such as Second Life) you have nothing in common (or at least you think you have nothing in common) with anyone else until you find them.
Virtual revenue streams for real-world companies: This will come initially from clothing and accessory brands deciding to create virtual versions of their real-world brands and actually selling them.
Mirror-worlds: Using Google Earth as a starting point, we'll see lots more worlds being created based on real-world places. Near is an example of this.
Educational worlds: No-one is yet to really crack the nut of providing immersive educationally based activities in virtual worlds, but they will, soon.
More cross-world partnerships. This will involve worlds partnering up to offer wider and more engaging experiences cross-world, as well as companies creating tools to bring worlds together.

Thank you Nic!

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Fashion in SecondLife - An Interview with Iris Ophelia

2008-06-30T20:29:00.000-07:00

SecondLife just turned 5.

Despite a severe amount of early over-hype and nagging technology problems, it has continued to grow a vibrant and diverse community since launching in 2003; over a million active users now regularly log into this alternate world.

Fashion within SecondLife is especially interesting. Inspired by the Linden Lab "create anything at all" philosophy and free from constraints of reality - the results can be striking.

To explore further, I invited SecondLife expert Iris Ophel to be interviewed on this blog. Iris is the managing editor of leading virtual fashion magazine SecondStyle.

Q - Hi! Tell us a bit about yourself, what attracted you into virtual worlds?

Well in my first life I'm a university student majoring in English. I first got involved with Second Life at the end of my first year when I was looking for something to relieve the end-of-semester stress. I've always had a love of aesthetics, in particular relating to clothing, so it didn't take me long to get hooked to my avatar.

Q – We see many wonderful creations in Second Life. Who makes them? Are they graphic designers, tech lovers, students or other, and are they doing it for love or money?

All of the above! There are real life designers who have branched into SL, and on the other end of the spectrum there are single moms doing it to make ends meet. Tons of people get into it for money, and those people tend to do worse than those who get into it out of a love for the process/medium/product. It's not a quick and dirty way to make money, by any means, you have to commit or you won't get anywhere.

Q – Some people perceive Second Life as “too techie” and mainly for geeks. Does it make it hard for fashion content to flourish?

People used to say that about the internet, and now CNN quotes blogs, and the CEO of Zappos is giving out free shoes through Twitter. It's true that there is a steep learning curve associated with Second Life, and creating content for it in particular, but there are a lot of resources available, and the fashion community has only been getting bigger, even with more 'techy' features becoming important to the market, like sculpted prims which require the creator to use a 3D modeling program like Maya or Blender. Again, it's not easy, but honestly neither is whipping up a real piece of clothing. It will take you hours of practice and patience either way.

Q – Are there any successful examples of designers generating buzz and increasing real worlds sales by participating in virtual worlds?

Nyla Cheeky's the best example. She's really increased her visibility as a designer with her work in SL, which merges her real creations with the digital world.

Q – How about virtual only fashion designers… is it enough to make a living being a Second Life designer?

Not everyone can do it, but it can be done. There are some design empires in SL that support their creators quite comfortably. It takes a lot of hard work, creativity, talent, and most of all passion to get to that point. Good examples of this are BareRose (run by a Japanese woman), ETD, and Fleur.

Q –What was the inspiration to start Second Style and what’s the concept?

I was writing some fashion pieces for an SL paper and a few blogs when Second Style was started out. It was created at a point when there weren't really any regular fashion publications. There were many blogs, but nothing like a magazine. The concept is basically just that, a broad-ranging fashion magazine that offers something for everyone (the only thing we really don't and won't do is sexually explicit material).

Second Style started out pretty mainstream, and since I started as the managing editor I've tried to keep the mainstream flavour, but push into some somewhat more specialized niche styles and shops that are frequently overlooked. Since Second Style started, other fashion magazines have cropped up, each with their own unique flavours. I like to think that Second Style is something that reaches all throughout the fashion world of SL and offers a bit of everything in one convenient book.

Q – What’s the most amazing thing you’ve seen on Second Life?

There's a japanese snack company called Glico, and they make a product called Pocky, which is sort of like a cookie stick dipped indifferent flavoured coatings-- It's wildly popular in Japan and with anime geeks all over the world. Well, around Valentine's day, they opened a sim for Pocky, with different areas themed around different kinds of Pocky. Sidewalks made of wafers, chocolate-covered pine- trees, it was incredibly well made, and it just thrilled me when I saw it. I'm a HUGE fan of the Japanese creative community in SL, they're definitely the hidden gems of SL. Photos here.

Q – Any new trends or directions? What are your personal predictions for the next 1-2 years?

Style in SL does 3 things. In part, it mirrors real life trends, in the past year for instance there's been surges of nautical motifs, pencil skirts, blocky platform heels, rich jewel tones etc.

Second Life also has standard staples that are released often and are generally popular, like babydoll dresses, oversized gowns, diamond- studded everything, stilettos...

The third element is something that mirrors Japanese fashion scene. Second Life has a lot of niches and pockets where alternative fashion flourishes (naturally, since the world is a blank canvas with no need for the laws of physics or practicality). There are ebbs and flows of trends in these niches, like the gothic lolitas (doll-like avatars), neko (cat-people), grunge, cyberpunk, steampunk, even fetishwear is a huge niche market subject to trends. It's pretty impossible to predict anything, honestly. Creators keep raising the bar on quality and creativity, the only guarantee is that in the next 1-2 years we're going to see things that are more amazing than we could even imagine right now. If you don't believe me, find a screenshot of SL from 2006, and compare it to some of my recent pictures. "It's fashion at lightspeed"

Thank you Iris!

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Shopping for Luxury, Online

2008-06-26T03:44:00.000-07:00

LV, Chanel, Cartier, Hermes and Gucci websites reviewed.

Looking to drop a cool $US 5k for a new Cartier bag online? Not so fast...

Whilst it doesn't match the experience of high-end boutique shopping, buying luxury goods online is a big money spinner.

High net worth consumers are highly Internet literate. More than half of those with household income over $US 290,000 are prolific, I'm thinking compulsive online shoppers. Presumably peering at notebook screens in bad lighting (wearing silk pajamas?) is a comfortable a state to make use of shiny platinum credit cards.

Yet for the opportunity, a recent Time article found that only a third of the top luxury brands offer a means for their customers to buy their items online. Whether mainly for reasons of protecting retail business or safeguarding "brand image", the net effect is no-go for otherwise willing consumers.

Checking out the situation, I compiled a review of the 5 top luxury brands' websites as they stand today. Whilst one or two offer a fantastic e-commerce experience, overall it's a very mixed bunch when it comes to allowing online shopping and user friendly it is - or in some cases, isn't.

1/ Louis Vuitton

The LV site is one of the best of the bunch, with a clean and stylish design that loaded fast with clear navigation. The use of video sparingly and in the right places (eg- runway summaries) definitely helps add to the glamourous feel.

The e-shopping section is marked clearly, and within a few clicks you are in the product detail information and able to add items to your cart to buy.

Today, only half or less of the products can be purchased online. For example shoes and ready to wear collections can not be bought online, but accessories and bags can be. Presumably this is for customer satisfaction reasons - not wanting an expensive purchase leaving a bad impression to an incorrect size, due to the lack of a fitting process, yet it would seem a simple enough solution to have a time limited free size replacement system at their retail outlets to handle this. Perhaps it's more about protecting retail revenue and margins.

Despite this, the site is a great example of a luxury brand presenting a stylish yet user friendly means for their customers to help tempt them to make that 2am spur of the moment online purchase.

2/ Chanel
The experience at the Chanel website is often an exercise in patience, with heavy and at-times excessive use of multimedia.

The full use of video, music and animation at times translate to long load times, which isn't very good if all you want to check out is one specific product you desire. Navigation can be frustrating, with the wrong mouse-click launching into another length wait. When it is finally loaded, it's a great experience that gets you into the mood of the brand.

And thankfully for those who are on a slower or shared connection, there is a low bandwidth website option provided as well.

When it comes to online shopping, the site provides some limited support today, restricted to only fragrance and beauty items within the US only. All up it seems to be an opportunity not fully grasped, especially given the rest of the range which would lend well for online purchase (sunglasses, bags anyone?), and what some of their nimbler competitors are doing today.

3/ Cartier
Browsing the Cartier site is a love-hate experience.

Without a doubt, it is the most heavy and slow of the group, yet also is probably the most graphically stunning when things are finally up and running.

However the sad end-conclusion is that it's less love and more hate - the blatant overuse of video for title animations ends up just frustrating users, many of whom would have moved on to another site. Not to mention about the use of separate pop up windows in different sections of the site, and the need to wait for full menus to load before being able to click one item in many cases, nor the un-user friendly registration (which I'll in good faith put down to bad translations between French to English).

Perhaps unsurprisingly, there is no online shopping at www.cartier.com.

Zero. None. Muchos Nothingias.

What's more, even prices aren't displayed, with a need for consumers to "make and enquiry" and leave a message to find out the price for an item. In the age of instant gratification, this doesn't seem like a very useful approach.

All up, not a great customer experience. Shame.

4/ Hermes
After struggling through Cartier, Hermes is a breath of fresh air. A big breath!

The whimsy, lightweight light design with handrawn illustrations is a great contrast with the other four other sites which are heavy with black backgrounds. The quirky feel is instantly attractive, and while not screaming "luxury" it certainly conveys a big degree of class.

With the white background, simple menu structure, the load times of Hermes' site are low, lightening fast in comparison to the others. The clean interface makes navigation a feel-good experience.

Thankfully, online shopping is fully supported, and fitting into the theme of the rest of the site, is a breeze. There is a good variety of goods that can be bought on the spot, from watches to bags.

Of the top 5 brands, Hermes is the most enjoyable experience in luxury shopping online today.

5/ Gucci
Never has been buying a $US 5399 jacket been so quick and easy. I was going to say painless, but at that price point, it's probably not the most appropriate description...

Gucci's website is a clean, fast and user-friendly experience, with a careful use of flash and offering rather than forcing the use of video to site visitors.

The interface is sparse and leaves a slightly empty feeling, particularly for a brand trying to reinforce a luxurious and highly stylish image. Yet the flipside means an easy and fast navigation experience, which means more revenue when paired up with great e-commerce functions...

The site features perhaps the strongest lineup of available products that can be bought on the spot with just a few clicks. With the inclusion of helpful size guides, the site lets users buy a wide range of fashion, from jackets to bags, boots to belts. Even hats are up for grabs! Although I'm guessing hats wouldn't be as common a purchase option.

All up when it comes to online shopping on Gucci, buying is easy. Perhaps too easy.

So what's the big picture? The state of the art? Well online shopping on most of the top luxury brand sites is a reality today, and in some cases such as Hermes and Gucci, very far down the path already. There are some outliers such as Cartier, but all up they seem willing to take advantage of the opportunity.

Which is a great thing for them as well as those consumers who are willing to buy their items at any time and for many, at any price. And for the rest of us? It's always good to dream...

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ShopItToMe.com - sale email alerts

2008-06-24T20:28:00.000-07:00

Not every website has to be a full-featured destination.

Sometimes those sites that perform just one simple thing become useful and vital part of day to day life. ShopItToMe.com, a small startup out of San Francisco is trying to be one such company.

It’s main purpose in life? Alert members by email when items in their size and matching their preference go on sale. It’s a simple yet strong idea, and if done well will no doubt of benefit to many a bargain hungry shopper. Who doesn't love a bargain?!

The site itself is bare, with a design that harks back to web 1.0 days (translation - it could definitely do with a little makeover). For those users who can put that aside, once registered they are asked fill in their preferences – how often updates should be sent, what brands to track, sizes etc.

The service works as advertised, with emails showing up with the latest deals. There is a little thrill when they are received, to scan out and see just how high a discount and what's on offer right at the moment.

On clicking the items in the email, you're directed to the brands or online retailers own site, where you can purchase the items or find out where to buy the item. This contrasts with other discount shopping sites such as smartbargains.com, which let you purchase highly discounted items directly at their site.

As Tamra Krefman, marketing manager for the site explains, the service is free to use, and the business model comes from commission on referrals to those third party websites. In the back end, ShopItToMe has arranged deals with many online retailers such as www.yoox.com to get access to the product and sale information, although it's an unknown whether this is an automatic or manual process to update the product information. The information is not exclusive to ShopItToMe members, making it a different model from VIP shopping clubs such as www.ideeli.com which provide member exclusive sales and giveaways.

Today, ShopItToMe provides discount-hungry shoppers a simple but effective tool, with a good level of personalisation in the email alerts. It's easy to see where this could evole - alerts delivered via text message, IM or Twitter, more location based information (shops within 10 miles of you), exclusive items etc.

There is the possibility that this level of personalised update could be incorporated as just another feature into some of the larger online shopping sites, however in the meantime ShopItToMe has potential to expand on its start and grow further.

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Fashion hits Time.com's Top 50 websites of 2008

2008-06-17T04:49:00.000-07:00

Time.com has just released their list of Top 50 consumer websites of 2008.

Ranging from usual suspects of TV, sports, music and celebrities, what's interesting is the inclusion of several fashion sites in the list for this year, notably Net-A-Porter, the undisputed fashion shopping heavyweight, ILikeTotallyLoveIt.com, one of a new breed of social Fashion 2.0 sites (and liketotallytheonewiththelongestname) and Omiru, an extremely popular style tips blog.

Asked for feedback by Oril Shariby, I suggested they could also include Polyvore, which was also included in my review of 5 of the best Fashion 2.0 sites, which really has taken off on the back of their simple yet powerful creative tools and excellent user interface.

Side Note - the Top 50 list also included the creative anime-themed virtual world Gaia Online. If you're interested to check out some "kawaii" 2D avatar fashion that is helping keep millions of U.S. teen fans tuned in, recommend to check it out..

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Hair 2.0

2008-06-11T22:29:00.000-07:00

In the virtual world, hair is a difficult thing to get right.

Hair in today’s 3D games for the most part ranges from average to pretty good.

However the promise of truly realistic hair – capturing the sheen, density, shape, colour, shadows and movement - hasn’t been realized yet. Why? The real challenge is the difficulty of modeling hair on today’s hardware. Today it is too much heavy lifting to be able to simulate all 150,000 strands of hair on a typical head, so as to be able to display them realistically in real time. For pre-rendered CG movies this is less of an issue, and we have seen some stunning recent examples, for example Beowolf from Paramount Pictures.

In contrast, in real-time environment like games and virtual worlds, approximations have to be made which take a lot of CPU cycles for acceptable levels of quality. As a result, most games have featured relatively simple hair models (shorter the better!), which either move in simple ways - for example one ponytail moving while the rest stays still, despite all the complex action and animation as characters fight, dance and play.

It has only been in the past year or two that the first high quality hair effects have started to emerge in games. Famed Japanese studio Team Ninja’s has been the standard bearer in this space with their Dead or Alive Extreme Series, with rendered hair effects that take a big step forward to feel more natural and believable.

These types of games have only started coming out on so-called next generation machines, such as XBOX 360, PS3 and modern PC environments, and typically limited to fighting genre for now, where the number of avatars to be rendered on screen is low, usually only 2. We haven’t yet seen this level of graphical quality applied to virtual worlds or MMOs which by their nature have a lot more characters per screen.

What about on the net? On casual gaming and community websites today, there is little to no 3D avatar hair styling and customization. Just as gameplay and graphics in these websites tend to lag behind modern games, in the same way the transition to 3D for avatars and hairstyles hasn’t yet emerged on these sites.

Instead today there are a flock of good 2D offerings, that enable users to model different hair styles from a front on perspective. In addition to US sites, many of the early innovation in this space has come out of advanced Asian markets and in particular Korea.

These are available in download client programs or more recently, in integrated websites accessible directly from the browser - for example HairCody in Korea. Most have the ability to import your own photo onto the site, and superimpose it with different hair styles. Different colors can be selected, and sometimes simple modification of the hair styles such as reducing length or some sections. To see it from different angles, you cannot see your own avatar but just pre-rendered faces examples. Some examples are Daily Makeover and Virtual Makeover.

If you choose to not use your own photo, you can see predefined example faces, either in more stylized avatar form or real models photographed.

Apart from hair, some also have ability to change cosmetics on the face, most notably the very simple but powerful site Taaz.

The effect is that you can get a good feel or approximation of hairstyles "look" on a 2D photo or avatar, although it’s still 2D - you won’t know how it will look from different angles, or see the hairstyle moving with your character.

So when will high quality 3D hairstyles be available on the web in avatar communities?

The answer, at least for the first steps will be – soon. Just like customisable 2D avatars have transitioned from game world to the web, the 3D avatar styling and hair will also start to be integrated into web communities, adding more fun and depth to the user experience. Watch this space..

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Augmented Reality and Retail

2008-05-26T19:21:00.000-07:00

Virtual Changing Room in the Real World?

I recently viewed a really interesting demo of augmented reality technology in action – and it got me thinking about the possibilities for virtual fashion at retail.

Augmented Reality is the concept of taking a real-life view of the world and layering in computer generated virtual elements, in real-time.

The particular demonstration I saw was from the Mixed Reality project from Polytechnic University. One of their prototypes is a Dancing Game with a 3D avatar projected into the real-world environment, with the avatar reacting to the real-time movements of the wearer of a VR headset equipped with webcam. Step forward, the avatar dances forward, turn to the right, she twists to the right...

Elements of augmented reality, sans clunky VR headsets, are starting to pop up in everyday life, one example being face-tracking webcams where cat whiskers or pirate hats can be added in real time to video chats. Prototypes are also being explored for use in product and interior design industry.

Of the myriad of future possibilities , one that comes to mind is fashion changing room – not just online but in the real-world at retail. This is in interesting idea, where you can take an everyday shopper and let them to wild and "preview" different items – jeans, shoes, T-shirts, accessories with different colors, textures to see how they match, before trying on or custom tailoring the real item.

We’ve already seen a couple of first-gen examples popping up in high tech retail showcase sites, perhaps the most famous example being the Adidas "Virtual Mirror" at their showcase store on Champs Elysees in Paris. Here, shoppers can see their image projected wearing different model of Adidas trainers in real time.

There is no doubt these can add a lot of engagement and buzz at retail, however for the time being remain complex and expensive setups limited to only a handful of locations .

Despite the promise, there are a number of challenges to do this in the real world: advanced image recognition that can recognise different body parts, the need to take into account different angles and postures, adjusting virtual cloth models around wildly different body shapes (it is the real world after all!), managing clothing layering, and animating as the user moves - to mention a few. This contrasts with the online virtual world using avatars, where the challenges are far less and where fashion mix and match is already happening today.

So the bottom line is that it will still be a while before a full body virtual mirror will appear in a shopping center near you. Progress will come, but not quickly as online.

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Custom Avatar Fashion and GirlSense

2008-05-21T23:40:00.000-07:00

Avatar Fashion meets User Generated Content

One of the industry’s big stories for this week was the acquisition of Starnet Interactive by InterActiveCorp, the sprawling empire of diverse web assets including Zwinky, Webfetti and Smiley Central. Starnets main claim to fame is as the developer of successful teen avatar fashion website, GirlSense.

Whilst not as widely known an Internet brand as say Habbo Hotel, Cyworld or the big-hitter in the tween and young teen fashion space - Stardoll, GirlSense has had quite a deal of success. How and why? A lot has to do with their easy to use yet surprisingly deep 2D avatar fashion system, which has helped propel them to close to 15 million registered members.

GirlSense’s Fashion Design studio is a 2D system that provides positioning and layering of different flat fashion items onto the static avatar. Like Stardoll and also Fashion 2.0 mix and match sites such as Polyvore, the success of this approach is in its simplicty.

Unlike SecondLife’s heavyweight separate client download, GirlSense is a simple flash based tool as part of their website. Users drag and drop items such as jeans, skirts, dresses, handbags onto the canvas and position them over the avatar to give the illusion that the avatar is “wearing the item”. In the static pose of the avatar, this works well and lets members have some flexibility to position the item exactly in the right place to suit their style. Want the low rider look? Position the jeans lower down, or wear the baseball cap higher on the head to amp up the hip hop look. Although because the orientation of items is fixed, you can only adjust a little before things start looking off.

The Fashion Design Studio also provides more options, letting users custom “tailor” many aspects of the fashion items. For example, a jacket’s sleeve and collar length could be tweaked, and its color tone, texture changed. Decorations could be added to the items for that more personal touch.

With these tools, endless variations are enabled which contributes to the diversity of “looks” in the user community. Whilst good in this respect, the flipside is that the drawback to this simple 2D approach where items are “faked” to be worn, is that avatars can’t ever be animated and must remain static on the page in the same pose.

What’s the implication? This means the avatar can’t dance around in a game or catwalk competition, or move around in animated emoticons during a chat like is done using the popular 3D chat program IMVU. This is one drawback, and explains why these 2D fashion dolls sites haven’t evolved into deeper virtual worlds, and why both types of approaches exist and are successful.

Regardless, GirlSense is a great example of a growing popularity of the “user generated content” approach to avatar fashion on the net – where users can spend hours styling their avatar fashion to get that pixel-perfect look.

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Fashion 2.0 - Five of the best websites reviewed

2008-05-14T23:29:00.000-07:00

Say Hello to Fashion 2.0...

Mention the term Fashion 2.0 to the average person on the street you'll probably bring up a laugh or more likely a confused shrug. However for those who work in the digital industry - it's a concept that makes a lot of sense.

If you think about it - Step 1, take the endless thirst from netizens for fresh fashion content and stylish new products, and Step 2, serve it up using all the powerful new Web 2.0 concepts pioneered by the Flickr, Facebook and YouTube's of the world. User generated content, social collaboration, video, group network and rating and of course, the glamor boy of the Web 2.0 world - mashups. You get the picture. It seems like a combination made in fashion heaven.

Or is it? A buzzword or reality?

We're in early adopter phase today. In the last two years, a number of fresh new fashion community sites have emerged and started to get some mainstream traction with internet users. These sites feature lots of ways for their users to share new styles and tips, discuss, debate, trend-spot and foster a feel good vibe through a whole host of social features. With slick AJAX powered interfaces, and hassle free navigation and sharing, these sites are expanding their audiences and beginning to build a new wave of hardcore and casual fans.

These sites are, on a whole, different from traditional online shopping and e-commerce portals, which have been around since the birth of Amazon, and certainly before the Web 2.0 buzz cycle. Of course at the end of the day though, these sites directly or indirectly encourage a desire to get out and spend money to turn that "must have" thing on the screen into a reality in the owners wardrobe.

In these fashion communities, the focus is on user collaboration and group discussion - "being your own style guru" - or just taking the more laid back approach and checking out what the rest of the community thinks is hot at the moment.

This is a fundamental change from the current model where a small number of fashion elite - the editors and style directors of magazines and the large fashion portals share their views to the masses, to one which is far more community oriented, letting any user to showcase their advice, opinions and trend advice.. and become as popular and as they would like (or at least as far as their writing and style sense take them)

There are a number of strong players coming of age in this new space. Here is a review of five of the best, out in the wild today...

1/ Polyvore

Creativity and simplicity come together in Polyvore a fresh, addictive mix-and-match style community.

The look and feel of Polyvore is white and elegant like a clean canvas, ideal for encouraging users to express their creativity - and that is exactly what they have done. Millions of looks have been created, ranging from the creative, cute, to the artistic to just plain stylish.

Within seconds of landing at the site, users are encouraged to start creating "sets" - a painless process using drag and drop of items either existing on the other sets in the site, or through an simple import process akin to that of ThisNext. The canvas on Polyvore lets users arrange the images, layer them, resize, move and arrange to hearts content. Think Photoshop Lite.

Whilst on the surface the functionality provided in the process is quite limited - for example, there is no rotate or align - this doesn't restrict the creativity greatly. And some deceptively simple functions - particularly the colour picker which lets you instantly find items of a similar certain colour tone / hue you select - are the most powerful, letting you let your artistic talents run wild.

What also differentiates Polyvore is the community, which is extremely positive and supportive. Users find their new set creations are often commented upon by with compliments and feedback. Users can follow others that they like, and be automatically updated when new sets by those fashionistas are published. Whilst it's very possible to just partake in Polyvore passively, viewing the most popular collections, or the top entries in the numerous style competitions run by the site since the launch in 2007, because the barrier to entry to create sets is so low, it's easy to see average users getting involved in the creation process.

With a combination of good feature design and a positive community structure, there is little of the negative hater talk or spam typically seen at other websites. Each item in a set can be clicked to find out the details about the item - and also easily clicked to link directly to the website that it was imported from.

This mechanism also helps set the site up as an effective front end to shopping e-commerce sites, by letting the individual brands and items have their items mashed up by users in interesting design sets. This "soft sell" approach to e-commerce is an effective one from user perspective. Brand logos are not forced down the users throat and the clean interface, free from lots of ad real estate or annoying rich media ads puts the focus on the user created mix and match sets, which allow click through to the different sites. With this approach, the emphasis is for the brands to get involved on Polyvore by importing their own items into the site, and arranging sets to give users a taste of how their accessories and fashions can be styled together.

On the topic of mashups, there are good supporting integration into other websites. Embedding of sets is easy, and lets you highlight your latest within other sites such as blogs. Letting the users take their creations back to the rest of their online daily life and their friends also gives a powerful marketing extension to Polyvore, no doubt contributing to the strong growth in the community they have experienced since launch.

Going forward, Polyvore looks set to build on their good initial community and layer on more tools for creativity and mix-and-match. Done right, they have the potential to break out and become a top-tier fashion destinations on the web, alongside the big media players.

2/ ThisNext

Launched late in 2006, at it's heart, ThisNext is a product recommendation engine that helps users link onto online shopping websites. The emphasis is for users to "shopcast" - that is, make recommendations of items they find on the web, which are then automatically shared with the community.

These recommendations can come from any site including of course e-commerce sites such as Amazon. If the user chooses they can enter their affiliate ID with those sites, and therefore earn commissions through 3rd party purchases of those products. This in itself is not bad, and leads the site to be also used by some people as a marketing channel - for those who want to "pimp" their own products or commission on popular items bought through referral link traffic.
That said, the website still works well, and by using the site and exploring the "top" lists, you can find lots of weird, wonderful and unique products, from fashion through to anything at all, such as this interesting Daft Punk inspired Electronic Helmets. There is also a fun world map-mashup function that shows what are the new things people have recommended from around the world.

Making new recommendations is simple, and can be made either by directly entering in the URL / serial number, or using a browser button that can automatically tag any site currently browsed by the browser. This clever approch makes it easy to capture the spur of the moment "wow that's cool!" feeling that you get when surfing the web sometimes and stumble across something interesting, that you might forget or not be able to navigate back to later.

Recommendations can be tagged, with the expected tag cloud and automatic generation of lists of products and picks associated with a selected tag. Recommendations can also include a custom sticker you add to the photo, allowing some personalisation and personality to come through on the picks.

Custom lists of product recommendations and wishlists are supported, enabling users to browse related or matching products of a common theme easily, and get the feeling for someone's personality and personal style on the site.

ThisNext is very much a web-only play, with only recommendations for those products on the web, and no ability to upload photos to make as recommendations. This does seem a limitation for the style spotters looking to upload photos of new looks snapped in shops or just on the street.

Whilst you can send "compliments" to other users, there are no private messages, chat or forum functions supported for users. However there are Facebook widgets and ability to embed into blogs, expanding the scope of the experience beyond just the ThisNext site.
In this way, the emphasis is around recommending items online that can be ultimately purchased, and less on community interaction. The social functions are quite simple, and you could argue, sufficient for what is a simple product recommendation platform. Users able to subscribe to be friends of other users and follow their recommendations. Actually this is more like becoming a follower rather than friend, as as other person do not have to accept friend invitations for you to add them.

And in a nice gesture to the hardcore fans, users who are active enough can apply to be named "Style Mavens" with special privileges and recognition given to them on the site. It pays to play.

3/ StyleMob

A rating fashion community, StyleMob's visual theme is striking - a quirky, hand-illustrated graphical style which has a 70s Glam Rock style feel. Unlike Polyvore or ThisNext, the main emphasis here is on the users real personal style. With less emphasis on photos of products pulled from around the web and more on looks, the feeling in the community is much more personal, as a result bringing forward the exhibitionist types to the fore.

Once you're through the slightly longwinded registration process and obligitary "invite your Facebook friends" appeal, you're in the site proper, and are encouraged to start creating and rating looks. A look is a photo of yourself or your own things along with description about the look - when, where, why etc... Individual looks submitted are brought together in a Look Book. Although there is an etc category for everything else, the focus is clearly on submitting happy snaps of yourself.

On the home page, a logged in user is then automatically given random "looks" to judge that other members have submitted. Much of the attraction is seeing and rating these widely varying looks from users from many different locales, cultural, sylistic backgrounds. Rating is fun, and the mundane 5 star system is renamed to one that scales from "Not 4 Me" right up to "Wow!" . After submitting your rating, you automatically see how the rest of the "mob" thought (picked a total opposite view to them? you're either not very with it or so far ahead of the curve you stand alone, style maven you). You automatically can see who bubbles to the top of the community every day by viewing the most Mobbed, or most Wow'd. Looks can also be saved by "faving" them, so you don't miss that once in a lifetime (or day) look.

While some revel in the attention of the community attention, if you're the type that are are shy of putting yourself before the "mob" (a lynching anyone?!), then this may not be the right place for you - unless you want to silently lurk and check out the more adventurous.
Social aspects are built out well. Style councils, friends, faves, watchlists, private messages and more are supported in StyleMob. Apart from embedding options for letting your look escape onto the wider web, there are also cleverly disguised viral marketing hooks built in, like the ability to create your own personalised poster "bulletins" as well as badges and widges to attract more friends to join in and get rated.

StyleMob at the end of the day delivers on its name. The Mob does what the Mob does - heap praise on those it deems deserving, lets down those that it doesn't but it's all done in a pretty friendly way, and since its launch in 2007 it's built a diverse and loyal community following - no doubt one reason for it's recent acquisition by Glam Media.

4/ MyItThings

MyItThings has a bit of everything - lifestyle blogging, trend tipping community as well as social network features. It's core service lets members live out their editor aspirations with a chance to create their own "My It Column" - a blog to dish the dirt, express news/views, share new finds with the community and more. As expected columns can be rated by members (called Writers on the site), with the best bubbling to the top.

An interesting twist to the site is that the most interesting and popular columns from users are compiled into "magazines", ranging from Fashion and Body to Entertainment and even Technology. Whilst billed as a 100% user generated magazine, several posts were created by staff from MyItThings, so it's really a mix of bite-size user and editorial content, which gives members a good read.

Apart from column writing, there are many other features... in fact perhaps a couple too many, as some such as Video don't seem relevant to the core experience. There is the ability to upload your own designs to the site for others to see and rate. There is a "My It Closet" which are basically tagged photos uploaded to the site arranged into different categories, including a Wishlist of items desired by the user. There are other social features including ability to upload videos and even, in a loving Facebook homage, a Wall function. As expected there are Widgets that let members publish their MyItThings content, particularly the Column to other blogs and social networks, increasing the reach of the site.

The business model is advertising driven with potential for some referral commission to products purchased in linked external sites. From the user perspective, one interesting take is an ad revenue scheme for those prolific writers (10 or more posts) where 100% of the click through ad revenue on their content pages is given back to the user via their Google AdSense account.

Even if that only applies to the small minority, this serves as a motivation to encourage good content creators to get active on the platform, which in turn is used to help attract mainstream users to the site to view content, if not create it themselves. It will be interesting to see how this dynamic plays out, and the content and community grow over the next year and beyond.

5/ StyleHive

If fashion is a cult, StyleHive is its online incarnation. On this full featured site, members can sign up to "follow" other stylish hivers, with some of the most popular members building a personal following of many thousands of fans.

Hivers are automatically updated on all the new postings and news from their followed style leaders, who can also send fashion "tips" to their followers. Notification of new style news (called "events") are also sent by email by default, which can border on spam when the number of updates from your followed hivers increases. You can always opt out, but this could be viewed as an annoyance factor for new users.

Users can create their own "saves" of favourite bookmarks - think Digg Lite, as well as set up a wishlist of items. There are a number of well implemented social features including private messages, forums, activity feeds similar to Facebook mini-feed, friends lists and more. It even features a "Linked-In" like notification on how "complete" your profile is. (You know, the "your profile is 70% complete, fill in some business recommendations to get to complete your profile" deal.)

Similar to the MyItThings magazine, there is a HiveDaily fashion report which contains user generated content and lets users make comments and start discussions. There is also a Style Diary.

Some well known retail brands including Gap are active on the site, as it also helps generate users with purchase intention to the brands own e-commerce store. StyleHive has a "buy it" button for items posted, which redirects to the third party site. This forms a key part of the business model, in addition to advertising revenue from banner and leaderboard ads on the site.
You can see the most poular product items and corresponding referred sites within StyleHive, with etsy.com, net-a-porter.com and neimanmarcus.com at the top of the daily rankings at the time of the writing. It's easy to see why a brand would want to get involved in a site like StyleHive - for minimal or no cost, this forms a effective way to get more products and buzz out to an important audience or online-trend setters.

Summary

Whist each of these sites are unique and vary in their approach, they share a common thread - building up a new community, giving the web 2.0 generation of fashion and lifestyle lovers a place online to share and explore.

Whilst this space is new, there is little doubt the concept of harnessing the community -the power of the mob, and applying it to the fashion & lifestyle vertical has real potential.

It's an interesting time in the industry. Watch this space...

Got another site you'd like VR Fashion to review or topic to explore? Feel free to leave a note.