IMVU to Exit Beta This Summer

IMVU has been in open beta for some time--since April 2004 according to Wikipedia--but it's getting ready to go live. I just received an email from the platform's PR company looking "to put together a group of elite influencers to gather opinions and feedback on the product before we take them out of beta," which will happen some time this summer. The long public beta doesn't seem to have hurt growth, though: IMVU reports over 20 million registered users and 400,000 active users, thousands of content creators who have produced over 1.3 million unique items, and a teen-slanted demographic with "a lot of 20 and 30 somethings using their product" as well.

Comments

[Torte]

IMVU is not ready to come out of BETA -- read through their Content Creator Forum and all of the new developements they have thrown at us (and some, not even told us about), and you will know why just by reading the titles.

Then, hop over to the Bugs forum -- the client is not ready to go out of BETA at all -- nor is the previewer which is used for developing.

Unless IMVU comes out with a magic, fully funcioning client and previewer in the next few months, I do not see how coming out of BETA can eve be concidered.

[P. Joseph Sandbothe]

Considering that IMVU has alienated and angered most of those thousands of content creators with their new peer review program and continually changing product ratings I would be surprised if they can even continue as a beta let alone a full production model. This "teen demographic" is mostly funded by free promo credits which when used generate no profit for the developers. All the while the site makes more and more items "adult" or unfit for their site, losing the paying adult consumer. Add to that the constant software problems I am not optimistic as to the future.

[Amy]

IMVU is totally full of bugs and is no where near ready to come out of beta! There are so many things going on in there right now, they don't know whether to scratch their watches or wind their butts! They are having a HUGE issue with the devs and customers right now and how they are being treated, and there are WAY too many fake accounts that they can't take care of! The BBB already has complaints about them while being in beta, and once they come out, it's gonna get more, and then they can REALLY get in trouble. IMVU, please, PLEASE listen to your users! You are not ready to come out of beta!

[John]

IMVU uses horrible business practices. They hook you will a million reasons and promisses until they get your money then the coin flips. Not woth the time, effort or money.

I have been on imvu for a year and a half. I am now deleting my account.

[Kathy]

How can a company like this even think to come out of Beta?
Their site is filled with illegal music up for sale.
They have no communication with their community....you call their office and you get a very rude receptionist.
Their response to emails are minimal.

[John]

ROFL...IMVU is no where close to being ready to exit BETA mode. The messenger is so unstable it crashes or freezes changing outfits or if there are more that 2 chatters. They are understaffed, treat their developers/members horribly, and can't even follow their own TOS. In short IMVU is a mess ALL over, from business practices, and customer service, to the actual client itself. And if you need a response from staff....well I hope longevity runs in your family.

[John]

ROFL...IMVU is no where close to being ready to exit BETA mode. The messenger is so unstable it crashes or freezes changing outfits or if there are more that 2 chatters. They are understaffed, treat their developers/members horribly, and can't even follow their own TOS. In short IMVU is a mess ALL over, from business practices, and customer service, to the actual client itself. And if you need a response from staff....well I hope longevity runs in your family.

[JollyRancher]

IMVU is in no way ready to come out of beta.
their Employies are uniformed and unprofesional. When they are asked questions concerning the site the will either ignore you tottaly or say i dont have an answer for that right now i will get back to you on it. When they do not come back with answer the general user will tend to ask over and over again only to be brushed off or replied to in a rude and unprofesional manor. IMVU need to improve their customer service before even thinking of comming out of beta

[VOR]

Interesting. I thought you had to have a product first before you could go live. IMVU certainly does not have a fine tuned product to offer anyone. It is quite littered with broken concepts, broken tools and vague rules that even IMVU itself breaks. Not to mention all the dirty little secrets.

If they are going by statistics only, then they are false ones. I sure feel bad for the Board of Directors and investors who are only looking at falsified numbers that do not reflect the reality of the business they are counting on to become a success.

This truly is a business run using backwards logic, where in the product may be fudged to look good, but indeed, at the end of the day, the fudge will end up running down their backside.

As a user of this site myself, I truly would love to see it succeed, but almost every employee would need to be replaced, along with management. If this is what they plan on doing by selling this company, I sure hope to hell the potential buyer looks beyond the inflated numbers and actually looks at the product and the community itself before they are stuck with a lemon.

[Djar]

IMVU coming out of BETA? LMFAO so u wanna tell me its goin to become a finnished product? dream on

[Pamela]

HMMM where is the positive in feed back...Although the idea of this concept is a great one you have to be ahead and not lagging(lol) behind..This program is no where near ready to come out of beta. It is sad to see the changes being made and about the the only thing that is accurate in the inflated statement is the size of the interviewees head...it is not compatible with modern technology..meaning Microsofts wonderful new windows program vista(lol)all of the above statements are true and "the client" is not considered or listened to in their forum content...very little positive feed back. And if the majority of earnings are being made off the sale of bootlegged music and net content due to copyright violations. Then this is the lawsuit waiting for you.

[Boo]

The ONLY good thing about IMVU coming out of BETA is that they will finally be legally responsible for their actions against their user & developer community & will be able to be held liable for their many many illegal actions against both parties.

I agree that there needs to be a COMPLETE change of staff from Board down in addition to a 180 turn around in company policy

[eXium]

Hm, IMVU coming out of beta? Wow, it's been a while, but I think it is necessary. I hope this means that there will be much needed improvement. Now, IMVU is great - otherwise why would so many people still use it? I see a LOT of negative feedback in this thread, but I assure you that IMVU is quite interesting, they are just dealing with issues that any decent sized company is going to deal with. For example, World of Warcraft deals with illegal gold farmers, and even after tens of thousands of bans, still has illegal gold farmers. Second Life was dealing with "Age Players", and I almost guarantee you they still exist. And IMVU deals with "music rings" and even now illegal gold farmers sneaking into the economy, and it probably always will occur. You can't blame IMVU for those sort of issues - as they only made the canvas with good intentions for social entertainment. But you can definitely judge their business model regarding their "Content Creator" program. That and their "Resellers Program" need a bit of tweaking before this out of beta release. That's my 3 cents. (Yes, 3)

[imvuvictim]

This is very interesting news,IMVU is going to try and go legit eh?
so does this mean that the IMVU forums will no longer be censored and that posts will no longer be edited and/or deleted in order to cover up unethical activites by staff and forum mods?
will the first amendment still not apply on IMVU as has been stated repeatedly by IMVU staff?
The business ethics of this company and many of it`s employees does not lend themselves to IMVU being anything more than a second rate beta test product.
It is ironic that they say they are looking for a group to offer feed back before they come out of beta this summer.IMVU users have flooded the forums with feedback for over a year now,almost all of which has been ignored by IMVU.All negative feedback is deleted from the forums and the user who posted it is banned.perhaps IMVU should have said they are looking for a group to offer them only positive feedback to stroke their egos before they come out of beta this summer.
An IMVU manager was quoted as saying that after dealing with imvu users all day he fully believes that the gene pool needs to clean out it`s shallow end.
The blatant favortism and double standards exhibited by imvu staff and their agents is nothing less than criminal in my opinion.
There are 3 sets of rules on IMVU one for the developers and users one for IMVU and a third set that is an unwritten set that IMVU makes up as they go along.
It`s ironic that a company like IMVU,that is registered with the dept of labor as a telecommunications company and is operating a chat server,has virtually no comunication skills when it comes to communicating with it`s customers/beta testers.In fact as I already mentioned the IMVU forums motto is "the first amendment doesnt apply on IMVU"
refering of course to the first amendment right to free speech.
The stataholic website shows that IMVU user statistics over the past 12 months have plunged by as much as %70 in some areas.
As others have stated the only good thing about IMVU coming out of BETA will be that they might finally be held legally accountable for their unethical,deceptive, and unfair business practices.
As far as the performance of the actual chat client, all I can say is not only is it not ready to be taken out of beta but it in fact should be taken back to alpha testing.
In order to use the website a user must use two different web browsers,becomes some features dont work with IE while other features dont work with firefox.Depending on what you planning to do on the website will dicate which browser you will have to use.
IMVU coming out of BETA this summer? lmao I think this annoucement is IMVU`s attempt at an early april fools joke.

[CONTENT CREATOR]

Reasons why IMVU should'nt go LIVE
1.BUGS IN MESSENGER
2.BUGS IN PREVIEWER
3.CONTENT CREATOR PROGRAM A MESS
4.UNPROFESSIONAL STAFF
5.TEDIOUS CATALOGE
6.NO COMMUNICATION FROM STAFF
7.MANAGEMENTS DENIAL OF ILLEGAL MUSIC BEING SOLD AND REFUSAL TO DEAL WITH IT.
8.STAFFS LACK OF ACTUAL USAGE OF IMVU RESULTS IN BAD DECISION MAKING
9.IMVU IS OBSOLETE AS FAR AS PROGRAMMING GOES
10.GEARED TOWARDS TEENS WITH NO MONEY WHEN IN REALITY IT IS MOSTLY ADULTS SPENDING THE MONEY.
11.AP PASS IS A JOKE IN ITSELF.
12.IMVU CHANGES RULES AND TOS WITH TOTAL DISREGUARD FOR THE COMMUNITY.
13.TOTAL DISREGUARD AND CONTEMPT FOR THE DEVING COMMUNITY.
And this is totally out of context:
The long public beta doesn't seem to have hurt growth, though: IMVU reports over 20 million registered users (alot of these numbers are dead IMVU accounts made when the company first opened and others who have came,seen and left as quick as they arrived)and 400,000 active users,(I would query what is thier meaning of ACTIVE) thousands of content creators who have produced over 1.3 million unique items,(thousands of devs who IMVU has alienated and 1.3 million products made by good people who are tired of being taken advantage of) and a teen-slanted(IMVU refuses to acknowledge that its adult base has imploded) demographic with "a lot of 20 and 30 somethings using their product" as well.

NEED WE SAY MORE?

[Jeffrey1970]

Not much I can add, other then what everyone has already said is 100% true and accurate!!!

[ns]

oy! they are no where near ready to come out of beta! first of all, imvu has been changing things without notifying anyone of the change, except in the forum, but only a select few ever visit the forums. some people do not have any access to it at all! second they are imposing fees on people so they can "gain control of what's theirs" and put more money in their pockets, straining the already strained community. third, the fact that minors can't get credits and beg or do things they should not, is a huge factor. while imvu has a tos and other policies, they DO NOT enforce most of what they write most of the time!
many of the content creators are having issues because of all the new things imvu is adding without telling us. there is a huge problem with copyrights, infringement and other things they feel they are not liable for. the chat program works fairly well, most of the time, the catalog to buy items is still a mess and loaded down with many illegal music products, and now they are trying to get content creators to sign away their rights to what ever they make.
i feel since i joined in 2006, that imvu is severely under trained and understaffed. they claim they cannot answer many questions we pose because we don't need to know. i'm sorry, but imvu needs to get a serious reality check if they think this is the way things need to be done!
if you don't believe any of this, take a look in the forums, at the policies and ask around! many people are unhappy with them at the moment!!

[Disgruntled Creator]

I have one thing to add. (actually i want to just expand on something) The fact that "Peer Review" is nothing more then FORCED LABOR on paying users.
You pay for your name and to be allowed to make products. You pay for credits to buy product. IMVU charges a large amount to make the 1st product and then takes an additional amount from every single item sold. They also implement that you now must "work" to police their catalog because they refuse to be held accountable for anything that is within the products.

Forced Labor on customers who pay to use their site. ready to go live? What a laugh.

[slnsual]

At the rate IMVU is presently going, they won't have many creating content by this summer so I hope the plan includes hiring some content creators who they pay rather than exploit for labor.

[Poked]

400,000 active users? Ha!

Go to their main page and take a look at the active users everyday.

An average of 50,000.

20 million members are dead dummy accounts. IMVU out of beta is truly laughable. And they disrespect and abuse the developers that create their content. I am a content creator there and an active member.