Myrl, a social network based around avatars, was created out of frustrations with the walled garden approach of many virtual worlds. Founder and CEO Francesco D’Orazio wanted a way to interact with avatars from other worlds. Right now that's limited to exporting profile information from the virtual world to the 2D Web, "basically a facebook/digg-like system for virtual worlds items." There have been other sites directed at the same idea, but Myrl is trying to make it easier by using a customizable app to automatically update the social network based profile based on in-world changes. That's enough to have garnered at least enough angel investment to publicly launch the site earlier this week.
"We’ve been using virtual worlds for a few years now, but are frustrated by how closed they are," D’Orazio said in a statement. "It’s really difficult to find out about interesting and curious stuff and to meet like-minded users. Our vision is to build a Metaverse where an avatar can move freely from one virtual world to the other following his interests and browsing content across multiple worlds rather than being trapped in a box. This is what we call worldshopping. And this is why we created Myrl.com."
Right now the site is only compatible with Second Life and There.com, but D’Orazio plans to extend it to OpenSim worlds, Entropia, Active Worlds, Kaneva, HipiHi, Vast Park, and others.
Open standards for transporting avatars across virtual worlds has become a hot topic.
The big question I have: Can Myrl beat IBM in this race?
Posted by: movemaster | March 24, 2008 at 03:12 AM
In particular I like the conclusion you've arrived at: following and paying attention to the right people can really make you more effective.
This says it all - knowing what the right people know is a commodity - it has always been the case but social networking now brings this concept into 3D.
http://partybizz.com
Posted by: mike | October 13, 2008 at 11:24 AM