Interview: Scenecaster Demos SceneWeaver for 3D Anywhere

SceneCaster, a Web-based platform for user-created 3D spaces, launched at DEMOfall. In a rare move, the company has been invited back to DEMO '08 to show off its new addition. SceneWeaver builds on the existing technology, but integrates it even deeper with the Web. Among other features, users will be now able to link from SceneCaster objects to any other object within SceneCaster or to an external website. "An idea here then is that any Web content that you've amassed is available to be weaved into the scene," Founder and SVP Mark Zohar told VirtualWorldsNews.com in an advanced demo. "We're leveraging all of the content on the Web, whether it be Flickr or YouTube."

"We will be also providing opportunities to upload certain media into SceneCaster," Zohar continued. "We're going to start with photography. Most people already have Slideshows available as albums. You can link out to what you've created, or if you want to link into SceneCaster to a photo or texture, you'' be able to do that."

From a product standpoint, linking images gives SceneCaster the ability to weave its scenes together, forming a larger terrain of connected spaces--"an interconnected Web of experiences." For a user to build a house, all he has to do is create the series of rooms with linked doors.

From a business perspective, SceneCaster hopes to expand its existing marketing options. Users can now attach more data to their objects as well, rating links out to other stores. But Zohar explains that brands can do the same.

"If you mouse over these objects, you get visual feedback that there's content attached," he said during his demo. "Clicking on this computer takes you to the Apple store. If Apple came to us and wanted to be the default link to all computers, that creates new marketing opportunities to a very engaged community. "

3D Anywhere

Beyond adding the options to weave scenes together, SceneCaster also wanted to make its content more available. Its had immense success by making scenes embeddable in Facebook, but Zohar wants to go further: "Just as YouTube did for video, we want to do with 3D."

In an example of the transportability, Zohar showed a scene that had been created in the normal SceneCaster website and then embedded in SceneCaster's program director's blog with all of the new links and information from SceneWeaver included.

"You can run the 3D web anywhere on the page as a consumable piece of media," Zohar explained.

To make the information from the scenes more accessible, SceneCaster is stepping out of a full 3D mode. SceneWeaver automatically detects the capabilities of the accessing device and pushes out either the full scene or a reduced scene through the universal viewer. With a universal viewer, users can't move through the whole scene, but they can still view an automatically compiled set of key viewpoints and access the embedded data and links.

"We looked at the growth of the iPhone and Japanese mobiles and people working behind Firewalls," Zohar explained. "So we're also going to announce that you don't have to have anything but a browser to access these scenes.  Now if I create a 3D scene, I can publish it anywhere on the Web with any device and carry forward all the data, and from our perspective, all the monetization opportunities with contextual information. "

Just as pushing the scenes out to Facebook's viral community was essential to the first phase, this new plan will be demoed on the iPhone as an example of SceneCaster's ability to integrate across platforms. Since not all devices, including the iPhone, support Flash, the universal viewer will be presented in XHTML. However, Zohar says a  Flash platform isn't out of the question for the future.

New Business, New Audiences

While DEMO '08 is mostly devoted to the tech side of things, Zohar is also announcing a new partnership. The company is launching a localized version with SceneCaster Japan in partnership with Hakuhodo, Japan's second largest agency. Zohar says they're eager to bring SceneCaster to their clients in an even more integrated fashion than in SceneCaster's partnership with Millions of Us. Zohar also indicated that the company is looking towards Korea.

SceneCaster has also been working closely with IBM, most recently in a shared space at CES, towards the goal of launching a network for commerce, says Zohar.

"IBM is obviously investing a lot in the 3D internet, but they are platform and technology agnostic," he said. "Not to put words in their mouth, but I think they're looking at SceneCaster as an opportunity for brands looking to be a mass market experience and for a more on-message and on-market experience because we can connect to any of their Web assets. Brands are looking to create on-brand experiences and create more immersive experiences. IBM is working with this on that and we're working closely with them."

Beyond new business partners, SceneCaster is also looking to expand its audience. After Facebook's boom for SceneCaster, the company is moving to other social networks, with an appearance in Bebo likely sometime this quarter. Zohar attributes much of SceneCaster's success--over 250,000 users within the first 45 days of marketing and a continued growth of 2.5% every day--to SceneCaster's viral nature. Something the company will continue to capitalize on.

"We're actively working with OpenSocial," said Zohar. "It's not at a state right now where we believe it needs to be in terms of being buttoned down and ready for production like Facebook's API. OpenSocial provides us with an avenue into MySpace and Hi5. Bebo is an immediate opportuniy because the API is so similar. We're also working with other networks with their direct APIs."

Regardless of which network SceneCaster goes to next, the goal remains the same.

"We want to make 3D a first class citizen of the Web by following the core standards of the Web," said Zohar. "We're basically creating the hypertext version of 3D by being able to link anywhere. "

Comments

[Eric]

Where is the innovation? Aren't they announcing something for the future (I read a lot of "will do"s) that other vendors are already delivering today?